Tightly Wound

Vacation!

I have a shiny new kitchen floor, birthday party invites for The Boy's sixth are in the mail, Feather the betta fish is ensconced on the admin assistant's desk at work, and I am armed with the makings of pomegranate martinis. It is officially time to go to the beach!

Hublet informs me that we will be taking the laptop along; however, I'm not gonna be out searching for free wi-fi, so this space will be blank for a week or so.

I'm going to read, hang out at a water park, get a massage and pedicure with my mom, help The Boy refine his boogie board technique, and partake of the aforementioned martinis.

Plus, the temps will only be in the low 90s. Considering that it's 104 degrees here today, that seems heavenly.

See you guys later!

Baseball on the Surface of the Sun

So The Boy won a free pass to a Carolina Mudcats game this year because he read a bunch of books for the Muddy Buddy Book Club. Hublet realized last week that the last time we'd have to use the ticket would be this week, and specifically tonight, so he called and got us 3 tickets for tonight's 7:15 game.

How hot is it here? So glad you asked! It's 100 degrees. And with the heat index, it's more like 105! Perfect weather for sitting outside at a baseball game! Not.

I wonder if it's possible to attend the game naked, with a giant, portable, battery-operated fan? Because there's not enough fresh squeezed lemonade in America to keep me sufficiently hydrated and cool, people.

But because I'm always thinking of you, dear readers, if the giant Catfish mascot, Muddy, passes out while doing a dugout dance, I'll take a picture for you.

Downhill Slide

Okay, it's officially August, the month that manages to nearly kill me every single year. So far I've planned a beach trip, a 6-year-old's birthday party, the replacement of the kitchen floor (prior to the celebration), and a short jaunt this weekend in order to celebrate my Mom's 70th birthday. Toss in a mother-in-law's birthday, a sister-in-law's birthday, prepping for back to school stuff, the start of the fall T-Ball season and my ongoing "oh dear God can we just be done with home improvements and MOVE" saga, and you can see why I'm tired just thinking about all this stuff. Oh yeah, and my paying job. Gotta do that too. Gah.

So instead, I'll ask how many of you have watched Mad Men on A&E? It has the same sort of ironic distancing humor that Remember WENN had, only it seems darker. And as an aside - how many of the actors in this series are going to end up being hardcore nicotine addicts? Seriously, I've never seen so many cigarettes in my life, and even if you're just doing a puff or two for the camera, take after take, day after day...maybe they're using clove cigarettes instead.

Dumbest Quote from Shark Week

From a fellow who had his entire left calf taken off by a bull shark while standing in waist deep water with a film crew in order to demonstrate that you can stand around in waist deep water with sharks and apparently not get eaten...

"There are no dangerous sharks, just dangerous situations."

This little gem caused both Hublet and myself to do a WTF? double-take. What makes the situation dangerous, pray tell? Perhaps the inclusion of a SHARK? Or several sharks? Who are in the process of looking for food?

That's like saying "there are no dangerous lions, just dangerous situations."

When you put yourself into the same space as a predator, and you happen to be made of stuff that the predator in question will eat in a pinch, then yes, I concede that the situation is a dangerous one. However, the danger is due to the presence of the predator, who is, by its very nature, dangerous to people, who should, by virtue of their more highly evolved brain, know better than to insert themselves into the dangerous situation, because the animals could pose a danger to the person, because the animals are DANGEROUS!

Now I'm dizzy.

Look, I'm down with the whole "don't get pissy at sharks for doing what sharks do" thing - you don't have to sell me on it, particularly if your only means of doing so AFTER we've just watched you get a body part ripped off in brilliant technicolor is to deny the nature of the animal in question. No, sharks don't set out to kill humans, but some of them will see if you're a tasty snack if you're in close enough proximity, which means that they're dangerous to humans.

I love shark week.

Put Down That Ho-Ho! You're Making Me Fat!

I love obesity research, especially the kind of obesity research that enables me to blame other people for my own inability to resist the siren song of burritos the size of my head.

So now I can add being overweight to the list of things I don't have to take personal responsibility for.

Isn't the 21st century great?

On a completely unrelated, but interesting note, read this story about Oscar the Feline Harbinger of Death.

Potterdammerung

Okay -

Read it.

Feel free to weigh in with opinions/reviews in the comments.

And I have one question (after the cut, for those of you who didn't spend 8 solid hours reading until your eyeballs were out on stalks):

How exactly did Neville end up with the sword? Are we to assume that it went to him in an hour of need - why wouldn't it have gone back to Harry, who was in dire-er straits?

Just a little niggle, but it did make me go "huh?" when I read it.

Oh, Sure. Anything Goes.

Until the old people start doing it. And then you have to go and declare an emergency ban on public nudity.

Savor that phrase for a moment - "emergency ban on public nudity."

And also this one:
"Some cite a case in which a senior citizen from Arizona strolled through the center of town wearing only a waist pack and sandals."

Which elicits 2 responses from me:
AAAHHHHH MY EYES!!!!

and

Ahhhaaaaahaaaahaaahaaa!

Remind me to avoid Vermont in summer.

Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm going to do it. I've been fighting myself about this since last summer, and I can't fight any longer.

I'm going to buy the family a Wii.

And by "the family," I mean mostly me and The Boy, although the fact that the Wii has Brothers in Arms and a number of good sports games will certainly appeal to Hublet.

See, I'm not an early adopter. I still have the PS2 that I purchased in 1998. I like it, it works, and as long as they continue to make God of War for it I will be a happy woman.

I had feared that the Wii would be too twee (say that 3 times fast), but this past weekend's Best Buy pilgrimage changed my mind. There were games I would enjoy! Games The Boy would enjoy! Games Hublet would play!

And at $250 it was a heckuva lot cheaper than the PS3, for which I see no interesting games. Plus, $600? For that amount I want the console to fix me a damn snack while I'm playing it.

In case you were wondering, I wasn't tempted by XBox, either. Halo is fun, but I can always cajole Family Friend Brad into toting his XBox over to the house if I ever get a hankering to get repeatedly killed by aliens. I kinda suck at Halo, actually.

So, yeah. A Wii.

Worst Movie I've Ever Seen

The Fountain.

No, not an Ayn Rand movie, just a load of crap that tries way too hard to be "deep" and to "redefine the genre" and along the way turns a couple of my favorite actors--Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weiss--into weepy, leaking, unattractive and aimless globs of What the Hell?

We got the whole "death as an act of creation" thing about 20 minutes into the film. The film is 1 hour and 36 minutes long. Yeah. By the time the movie's over that dead horse has pretty well been beaten to a pulp.

At least Weiss gets to die. Well, maybe Jackman does, too, but I'm not sure, because the narrative was completely incoherent. Yes, interweaving three stories is fun--when done correctly. This movie doesn't do it correctly.

You know, when your entire reaction to a film is "How did this even get made, much less made with actors well above the straight-to-video-or-Sci-Fi-Channel grade," it's best just to seal the Netflix envelope and move on with your life.

On the other hand, I did enjoy Ratatouille, though Hublet wasn't impressed.

My Damn Cat

She kills stuff. Lots of stuff. And I don't usually care, because I appreciate being able to walk across my back yard without sinking into the mole tunnels that criss-crossed it once upon a time.

But she has 2 particularly annoying traits - one, the fact that everything she kills must be dismembered and eaten on the sidewalk directly in front of our front door; and two, that when she kills rabbits, she only eats the head.

The second trait is why I'm cursing my cat this morning.

Yesterday, after I fetched The Boy from Y camp, we returned home to note the appearance of a dead rabbit: the body lay on the left-hand side of the sidewalk, and the neatly severed head was beside it.

I sighed and told a grossed-out Boy that I'd deal with it AFTER supper.

In the meantime, the cat returned to the scene of the crime and devoured all of the rabbit's head except for a piece of the upper skull that was about the size of a quarter. Okay. At least the rabbit wouldn't be looking at me as I disposed of it.

So after dinner and a bike ride, The Boy accompanied me to get the shovel, and insisted on "helping" me dispose of the rabbit.

I gave him his smaller shovel, and we divided the labor thus: I scooped up the bunny's body, and The Boy did the same with the cranial fragment, and we toted our laden shovels to the wooded area at the back edge of our property.

Since the ground's current parched state has rendered it concrete-like and impossible to penetrate with a mere shovel, I simply tossed the bunny corpse into the leafy wooded darkness with a flick of my wrist and that was that. Let the circle of life commence! Or conclude! Whatever. Beetles need to eat, too.

Then it was The Boy's turn. Except he flung his shovel upward instead of outward, and I was treated to the sensation of the topmost portion of a recently deceased rabbit's skull smacking me right between the eyes.

Awesome.

I hate my cat.

Of Training Wheels, and The Blessings of DVD Players

The trip went off without a hitch. Well, without any big hitches. There was a brief moment of panic when I picked The Boy up on Wednesday evening and it was revealed that the portable DVD player was broken, but a quick stop at Best Buy ensured that the day--and 9 hours of car riding over the next 4--was saved.

There was also the slight problem of the 3-D IMAX movie at the Smithsonian's Natural History Museum that featured lions being lions. In 3-D. The Boy is an egalitarian at heart, and was all for giving those mean lions a whupping because they were eating those deer. The shark movie didn't bother him that way, probably because fish just aren't that cute and cuddly.

Hublet was pleased with his Father's Day gift of a Ric Flair and the Four Horsemen DVD, and The Boy seems tickled as well. I am bracing myself for another spate of unannounced elbow drops when I attempt to nap, but it's a small price to pay for happy menfolk.

There's been lots of talk lately about boys, and boyness, and boyhood and whether or not publishing a book for boys about activities that boys like to do is somehow evil and will result in The Handmaid's Tale coming true. Short answer - no. Others have given much better long answers than I.

Boys and girls are different, and that's a good thing. The sexes compete, and that's also a good thing. At least, it's a good thing when trying to convince a somewhat reluctant Boy to lose the training wheels. All it took was an offhand comment about how well that little girl--who's just The Boy's age--was riding her bike without training wheels, and he's now training wheel free. Nope, I'm not above some shameless psychological manipulation--I'm a parent, for crying out loud, and there are just so many hours in a day.

And if my playing to the natural boy vs. girl competetive streak in my son leads to The Handmaid's Tale, well, at least my boy's metaphorical Bicycle of Patriarchal Oppression won't have training wheels. Small victories, people. Small victories.

DC Bound

Well, the family is off to D.C. for our first Official Big Arm Family Vacation Wherein The Boy Will Be In the Same Hotel Room With Us for Four Days.

On the bright side, going to bed around 9 p.m. will probably be good for me...

In the meantime, Hublet's been posting up a storm about his last days teaching in the hinterlands. Go check it out.

See you next week.

Conversations With My Mother - Friday at Work Edition

Me: Hey, mom.

Mom: Hey hon. Look, I'm at this furniture store, and...

Me: No. Seriously. Do NOT buy any furniture.

Mom: But they have this beautiful Kincaide four-poster plantation bed in Queen size with -

Me: Mom!

Mom: The entire bedroom suite is only $2300! The bed alone is usually $2500! It's a closeout sale! Once it's gone, it's gone!

Me: All I asked you to look for was one of those cigarette lamps to go in my guestroom.

Mom: Oh, I got that - 30% off of $58 bucks!

Me: I have nowhere to put new furniture, mom. No. Where. Thus the whole "buying a bigger house" plan.

Mom: And then you can use this furniture! Oh, that woman over there is looking at the bed!

Me: What are you going to do, tackle her? I don't have $2300 bucks just lying around, mom. If I did, my car wouldn't still have that dent in it.

Mom: I have my cane. And I'll pay for it up front.

Me: And what if we don't end up moving for like a year or more?

Mom: It's such a beautiful set! And you can pay me back!

Me: But no space! Mom! There will be other furniture stores having closeouts. Where. Will. You. Put. The. Furniture?

Mom: (Sigh) You're right.

Me: Just relax, mom. Your shopping-fu will be needed soon enough.

Mom: Okay. Bye!

****30 Minutes and a Burrito the Size of My Head Later****

Me: Mom? Why are you calling my cell phone? I'm in the office.

Mom: Oh, you didn't just try to call and leave a message?

Me: I did last Sunday, not today.

Mom: You know, I think I'm going to buy this furniture. I'll break down the stuff in the guest room and put the new stuff in there and then you'll have your grandma's extra bedroom suite all ready to go for when you move!

Me: ...

Mom: We could go ahead and move it down there, and you could get rid of your old bed, move the other stuff into the guest room, and replace it with grandma's!

Me: But the room isn't big enough - oh, dear God. Fine. Fine. Really, I just wanted a lamp, mom.

Mom: It'll be great!

Me: (heavy sigh) See you later, mom.

Mom: Love you, sweetie! Bye!

Heavenly Twins? Oh, Really?

You know, I like Star Wars just as much as the next kid who grew up in the 70's and 80's, and I am gratified that The Boy enjoys it as well (although the constant light saber battles in the backyard are starting to get old, especially when The Boy insists on "Forcing" his way "Up High And You Can't See Me" and the hapless Darth Vader, played somewhat resignedly by yours truly, has to wander fecklessly through the pine straw until The Boy drops a metal beam on his head), AND as an English major I understand that sometimes our need to interpret can get the better of us, but I've just gotta draw the line at the recent History Channel production Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed.

I mean, it's not that you can't draw the obvious parallels between Joseph Campbell and the Star Wars universe, or compare Luke to any number of reluctant heroes in myth and legend, but when you create a two hour special in which a roster of disparate, seemingly randomly selected people ruminate on The Meaning Of Star Wars and come up with gems like:

"Well, it's obvious that Luke and Leia are Apollo and Artemis, the heavenly twins,"

I've gotta politely ask you to put on the brakes.

Seriously, what do the following people have in common?
Camille Paglia
Newt Gingrich
Nancy Pelosi
Joss Whedon
J.J. Abrams
Stephen Colbert

Stumped? You bet you are! These folks, along with a host of nameless eggheads including the slightly over-excited chick with the Heavenly Twins fixation, are all Star Wars Pundits!

I know! Because we are All United In Our Love of Star Wars! It's the new Uber-Myth for our generation! Because all those old myths don't have spaceships! And Ewoks! And mentally challenged bits of CGI with stupid ears!

Sigh. And yet I watch it, because The Boy loves Yoda, and the two-minute clip of Yoda bouncing around like a crack-addled throw pillow makes him very happy.

In Which I Sing the Praises of Craigslist

All hail to thee, Craigslist, enabler of junk-offloading!

Long ago, I purchased a Little Tykes 3-in-1 playset for The Boy. He has outgrown it, and in the interest of preparing the house for market I wanted to get rid of it. But it is large and unwieldly and I wasn't looking forward to disassembling the dang thing in order to tote it elsewhere.

So I figured I'd give this Craigslist thing a try. Snapped a couple of photos of the contraption on Sunday, and charged a ridiculously low price for the item, because I figure if you're going to have to pull this thing apart, load it up and haul it out of my yard it's going to make up the difference in cost. Hit the "post" button at 8:30 p.m. and went to exercise.

By 10 p.m. I had over 30 responses to the ad, including some from folks who wanted to show up at my house at 8 a.m. (with a trailer) on Monday to haul the thing away.

Those people were kind of scary - it's just a playset, after all.

I went with the whole "first come, first served" principle and so will be relieved of the plastic yard art on Friday afternoon.

Hublet's repsonse to this? "Wow, what else can we sell?"

Seriously. This could become addictive. It's like having a garage sale without having to be particularly organized about it, which is perfect for me.

The More You Know...

Trying to take a shortcut to melting chocolate by nuking a coffee cup full of chocolate chips in the microwave?

When the time's up, don't grab the cup barehanded.

As a corollary - ceramic has a weird, almost adhesive quality when it is heated and then comes into contact with human flesh.

On the plus side, the cheesecake came out great!

I Can Be A Hero, If Only In My Dreams

Last night I had one of those extremely long and involved dreams that seem to last for hours. This one was about a house party located in a combination house/restaurant. For some reason, I was getting a ride to the party from Paris Hilton, who was being extremely annoying, so I told her to stop being such a self-involved little twit. Then Paris burst into tears and spent the rest of the evening trying to get back in everyone's good graces by giving them tiny bottles of alcohol. And everyone at the party kept coming up to me and saying in hushed tones, "You made Paris cry!" and then grinning at me.

I woke up feeling powerful and refreshed.

Feel free to engage in gratuitous dream interpretation in the comments.

Happiness Achieved; Blog Hit Hardest

You know, I've discovered an unfortunate truth: the more generally content I am, the less interesting I become. When I'm agitated or things aren't going well, I get hyped up and irritable and this fuels ranting and raving that can hopefully be considered entertaining.

Unfortunately for you, dear readers, I'm feeling pretty good right now. Oh sure, there's the constant underlying current of stress that comes from trying to get a handle on all the crap we've got to get done to put our house on the market and buy a new one, but it's not like we've got a deadline on that or anything. And closet cleaning hasn't inspired my Muse Of Rage, or her sister, the Muse of Humorous Anecdotes, and the Muse of Random Allergens, while definitely present for the cleaning and quite effective at making me sneeze, isn't much good for blogging.

I mean, politics are the same as usual, the academics I deal with are as nutty as ever, and there's a host of crap out there to get fired up about, but right now? I'm just kind of mellow. Sorry about that.

In the meantime, some advice: don't get arrested in Durham. Seriously.

Not-So-Random Question

Dear Men -

Having seen one too many "male vitality" infomercials, Viagra and Cialis ads, and articles like this one, I have to ask:

When does it stop being all about your penis and its functionality or lack thereof?

I mean, if you want to be all obsessed with your parts, it's your perogative, but I've gotta tell you that when you start trying to drag us female types along with you in your quest for "the eternal ability to boink like bunnies" by creating magic libido enhancing/female weight loss pills, well, that's the point at which I may become violent.

People age and drives decline for a reason, guys, and at least one of those reasons probably has something to do with the ignominy of breaking a hip while trying to get your pr0n on at age 75.

The time comes when you just have to let go. Literally.

I am the Zeitgeist, Goo Goo Ga Joob

Well, not so much. But I'm not the only person out there who's having flashbacks to pre-Reformation times with all of this talk of carbon offsets.

Read this.

The illustration is lovely as well.

In other news, the Z-Pak is truly a marvel of modern medicine. Tonsils are puss-free, and lymph nodes have been returned to their upright and locked positions. The only drawback is that it makes food taste kind of odd. But this, too, shall pass.

Tonight I shall take in a rousing game of T-Ball with my folks, and then I shall enjoy the latest episode of Drive with my nightly glass of wine.

April's almost over and life is good.

Not My Best Month Ever

So now I have strep throat. Haven't had it since I was 12, and have no clue where I got it from, as no one else in the fam is sick. Yet. And at the risk of sounding like a pitiful whiny little beyotch, let me just say that 25 years is PLENTY of time in which to forget just how much strep throat sucks.

So let's recap, shall we? Euthanized dog, tore tendon, was laid low by strep. Hublet is slowly going insane because of a job interview, and taking me with him.

On the bright side, T-ball is turning out to be a blast, but it's not enough to overcome my irritation at April, the Cruelest Month.

Blogging will resume when I can sit upright for more than 10 minutes at a time.

Lamest of the Lame

Blogging may be light this week, and not just because of my schedule.

Apparently, I am no longer the badass I once was.

Once upon a time, I played co-ed softball on a team called "the Gimps," and emerged virtually unscathed.

Once upon a time, I was routinely roughed up by a hyper Korean kickboxing instructor and managed to shrug it off.

But last week, my luck ran out. I was taken out of commission, not by flying fists or swinging bats, oh no.

I tore a tendon in my right hand by ringing a handbell.

In my defense, it was a really big handbell, and I have delicate, womanly wrists.

But still.

A handbell.

So the brace I have to wear makes typing a chore. As my job consists primarily of typing, this is problematic. Which means I will probably only type when I absolutely have to. Ergo, the blogging, it will be light unless I can persuade Hublet to take dictation.

However, feel free to point and laugh in the comments. God knows everyone at work has.

R.I.P.

We had to put old Gertie dog down today - she hadn't been able to eat anything without vomiting for about a week, and today she had a seizure and started vomiting blood. The vet had kept Gertie at her house over the weekend--funny thing about that dog, whenever she was around strangers or in strange places she was the model of limpid-eyed sweetness and the darling of all who saw her, but with me and Hublet, she fairly often resembled the devil.

I used to joke that I should have paid better attention to the sign on her kennel door when we got her from the SPCA - it said "Owner Deceased." I'm convinced that Gertie's first owner displeased her somehow, and she offed him.

Look deep into these eyes and tell me you don't think she could have done it.

This picture was taken a week ago, just before she went to the vet for the last time. Rest in peace, you stubborn old dog. There won't ever be another one like you.

Stalwart Buttocks, Ho!

As you may have guessed from the title, Hublet and I finally made it to see (The) 300 in theatres this weekend. I loved it.

Manly men kicking ass in capes and underpants - check!

Limbs--Both Attached and Not! Flying! Through the air! - check!

Sweeping declarations of every single intention, delivered by bellowing men with the gravitas of Hamlet! - check!

Random crazy freakshow villains that seem to have wandered out of Lord of the Rings by accident - check!

And on a related note - seamless CGI! - check!

If nothing else, that movie was a visual treat. And not just because every single actor in the film appears to have done nothing but work out for 2 years prior to filming.

Obviously, I Was Ghenghis Khan in My Former Life

And now I am being punished.

To recap My Week Thus Far:

Dying Dog
Everything I Touch At Work Turning to Crap

And at 2:30 a.m., Hublet and I were awakened by The Boy, who climbed into bed with us and proceeded to toss, turn and poke until I realized that not only was he going to bruise my kidneys, but also that he seemed really hot to the touch.

So, I'm working from home again, trying to finish the scary research release in time for the editorial cycle, while looking after a sick Boy and attempting to work out a payment plan with the vet so that my credit card doesn't implode.

Helpful Note to Readers - trying to learn how statistical regression analysis is done is easier when one is not exposed to the sounds of Dig Dug emanating from the TV in the den.

Oh, and the cat managed to come inside just long enough to vomit on the carpet. Three times.

I'd run away, only I can't afford to buy gas.

A Week in the Life - Thus Far

Ah, Monday. After a weekend spent attending spring carnivals, toting a dog to the vet, waving palm fronds, and watching jousts at renaissance faires, I was ready for a relaxing time at work. Alas. Here's Monday:

1. Arrive to an irate email (cc'd to the freaking UNIVERSE) from an equally irate academic who insists that said academic's changes to a piece I wrote were not included.

2. Email back (somewhat snippily, and also cc'd to the freaking UNIVERSE) with attached document wherein academic's changes are marked, note that said changes were incorporated. Excise contested content and inform academic that ball is now in academic's court.

3. Get dragged into strange internecine departmental strife in one of the colleges, because a reporter had the temerity to call looking for an expert. Unsurprisingly, nothing is solved, the reporter is frustrated, and it's all my office's fault. Or something.

4. Realize that researcher with seriously big deal research coming out soon--which entails me coordinating with 2 other research institutions, a major journal, and a government funding agency--has not gotten me the promised changes to a release that has to go, AND that said researcher is now halfway across the globe, scheduled to return about 1 day before the embargoes lift.

5. The dog, who spent Saturday puking and receiving emergency fluids at the vet, is still not eating.

6. Find out that fun quirky research originally scheduled to be announced in May is actually being announced in 3 days, and we need a release for that.

7. Receive yet more changes from original academic who was complaining about changes--2 days after article was released.

8. Get another phone call from different reporter wanting the same expert who was involved in the earlier internecine academic douchebaggery.

9. Vow to start choking bitches from the Dean level downward.

10. Dog still not eating--now with Non-Drinking Action and a bit o' puke!

Tuesday -

11. More changes from academic A. The piece is no longer even available on the web. What. Ever.

12. Dog not eating. Not drinking.

13. Oops! Forgot that I had content for a web page due!

14. Vet wants to see dog. Grab crap for web page, decide to work from home.

15. Big deal researcher still AWOL. Other participants growing antsy.

16. Turns out latest version of big deal researcher's release isn't really the right version anyway. Vow to start choking self if the day does not end now.

17. Dog goes to vet for bloodwork, I.V. fluids and medication, and x-ray.

18. Oh, look! Email from another reporter wanting the same expert from the College of Academic Douchebaggery.

19. Vet wants to keep dog overnight. Promises to call after hours to discuss bloodwork results.

20. Miss Boy's T-ball practice while waiting for vet to call. He gets home from practice; guess what? Vet calls!

21. Turns out vet's treatment for dog's Cushing's disease has resulted in massive kidney damage and extended hospital stay that will probably wind up in euthanasia anyway, but what's another thousand bucks, right?

22. Go for relaxing walk, twist ankle.

23. Drink wine. A LOT of wine.

Wednesday

24. Arrive to find academic with quirky research waiting outside office, along with colleagues brandishing news articles concerning College of Academic Douchebaggery.

25. Guzzle coffee, force quirky research guy to come way, way down so that regular folks (like me, before I've had my coffee) can understand research.

26. Go to another meeting with a different academic about completely different research.

27. Email AWOL big deal researcher--wonder if 3rd world has good cell phone reception.

28. Coordinate more reporters with same expert. Giggle evilly to self the entire time.

29. Schedule more meetings, attempt to juggle random politics, crazy academics, and antsy reps from universities and government agencies while writing press release about research I just. don't. get.

30. Vow to choke next person who talks to me before Friday, I swear to God.

Dear Everyone

Please stop using the term "mashup." It is neither fresh nor particularly descriptive. You aren't using it because it's the best word for the job, you're using it because you think it makes you seem hip and current.

Unfortunately, when everyone from new car reviewers to food marketers adopted the term approximately 5 minutes after it first appeared in Wired, it became neither.

So knock it off. If I want cloying, overly self-aware and ironic pseudo-slang passed off as descriptive language, I'll read the PMLA.

Thanks so much,
BAW

Long Week

It has been a long week. And a sad one. Yesterday I had to attend the funeral of a lady who was like a third grandmother to me--she babysat me from age 1 to age 9. I called her Grannybird. She was 95 and hale and hardy up until a month ago. I hadn't seen her in years, but visited with her before Thanksgiving, and had promised to bring The Boy by soon (he had a cold at Thanksgiving, and an assisted living home is no place for a small germ factory). Unfortunately, the next time we were in Winston, Grannybird was in the hospital.

When I told The Boy she had died, he said, "But I never even got to see what she looked like!" and cried.

Still, 95 years of a life well lived is something to be proud of.

So is 49 years, though the span is much too short. Weird how attached you get to people you don't really know, just because you read their blogs.

Verging On Obsession

Watched the History Channel's blatant attempt to capitalize on Frank Miller this weekend--Last Stand of the 300. They did a nice overview of Spartan culture and Thermopylae and Themistocles and the Greek navy, and they actually had a budget of over a dollar to do it!

So what did they do? They filmed everything in weird blue and sepia tones, just like the movie based on the graphic novel, complete with total ripoff of the oracle scene--all blue and slo-mo and dreamlike. And while I appreciated the fact that this piece had much higher production values than the "Fat re-enactors in period military costumes" fare we usually get, the blatant copykat visual style kind of creeped me out.

As did Xerxes' hair.

And the pensive brown gaze of Leonidas. He was PENSIVE! Because he was SACRIFICING HIMSELF! PENSIVE, I SAY! By the 35th close-up, I was aware not only of King Leonidas' tendency toward pensivity, but also that he has 125 eyelashes on his upper left eyelid alone.

And the weird Moses-looking dude who apparently spent all his time standing on cliffs around Sparta, contemplating infants. Aaaaaaand scene!

And the sad, sad Persian who sat crying in the (CGI) rain. Seriously, who knew that the Persian Empire's biggest export was emo?

Overall, though, I enjoyed it. I'm going to see the actual movie this weekend, and I can't wait. Especially after reading this guy's take on why critics are so pissy about the whole thing. This excerpt just nails it:

The critics, however, were mostly hostile, and frequently venomous. Many reviews made the same points:

• All of the good guys are white people and many of the bad guys are brown. (How this could have been avoided in a film about Spartans versus Persians is never explained; the distinctly non-Greek viewers at my showing seemed to have no trouble placing themselves in the sandals of ancient Spartans.)

I guess they couldn't grok the fact that you can have a straightforward movie filmed in graphic novel style without a bunch of kitschy crap or world-weary ironic self-awareness slathered on in order to make it "acceptable" to the intelligentsia.

Sigh. The more I'm around the intelligentsia, the less apt their title seems to be.

Haiku Friday

Here at work we have an email tradition - Haiku Friday - in which we spend time between managing freaks, professors and media by bitching about our lives in the form of traditional Japanese poetry. Because really, bitchery doesn't seem so petty when it's poetry. So here's to my Friday:

Twelve-thirty a.m.
The Boy appears with nosebleed,
Caffeine I.V., stat!

I posted this one at Emily's FFO thread:
Water falls from sky,
Drivers Panic! Traffic Jams!
Learn to drive, assholes.

Most neurotic prof
makes world-changing discov'ry
there goes my spring break.

The Boy and the dog
leak urine, blood and vomit
my carpets are dead

Supernatural -
last night's ep wasn't too great
but next week looks cool.

Passive-aggressive
admins and department heads -
I wish to smite them.

God Of War is back,
Kratos slings his fiery blades
Hublet shakes his head.

Feel free to add your own...

Catching Up

I was greeted this morning by a random pile of entrails on the front sidewalk. Too big to be bird or mole--drat. This must mean it's rabbit season again.

The dog is at the vet for round 3 of tests, so we can determine which pills to give her to control the Cushing's. Woo.

We acquired a new betta fish on Saturday. The Boy has named it "Feather--that's a boy name."

If one more person tells me to be "intentional" about anything--strategizing, praying, or living--I will kill that person. Intentionally. Because it simply isn't POSSIBLE to unintentionally create a strategy or pray. It is possible to be thoughtful about these things, but apparently thoughtful isn't strong and verby enough for the Exhorters of Intentionality. Gah.

I can't wait to see The 300. Woo! Graphic novel-style visuals! Spartans! Ancient world ultra-violence! And I must confess myself bemused by all the freaking out about "OMG what does it MEEEEEEENNNNNN!" in reviews. Folks, it's a fictionalization of an historical event, filmed in a visually unique way. As a bonus, you can use it as a gateway to discuss current events, but I would caution you against letting your Inner English Majors get carried away, because that way lies poor argumentation, misuse of metaphor, random assignment of ciphers, and madness.

Here's the thing--Hollywood is perfectly capable of making a movie about the Iraq war that's actually set NOW and IN IRAQ. The 300 is not that movie. If Hollywood hasn't made a movie about the Iraq war, it's probably because they don't think it'll sell. Feel free to debate why that may be the case. It's a helluva lot more interesting than trying to figure out whether the Persians or the Spartans represent the U.S. in a movie made from a graphic novel written over a decade ago.

Why I've Been AWOL

Let's see...

This week, I've had the dog's Cushing's disease confirmed, had a plumber out to stop the pipes in my home from exploding, got The Boy a haircut, new shoes, and his weight in Chick Fil-A nuggets--seriously, he ate FIFTEEN of those tonight; I foresee a growth spurt--practiced lifting handbells that are roughly the size of my child in rapid succession--ow--and oh yeah, worked almost 40 hours.

So there hasn't been a lot of time for me to pay attention to the world at large.

Though I did read this Inside Higher Ed article on KC Johnson's recommendation, and as usual, the comment section is way more interesting than the article could ever hope to be. The article in question is total garbage, not because anyone will disagree with the underlying "Rape is bad, mmmmmkay?" sentiment, but because she seems to think that the Duke lacrosse case is still a pertinent example of weird tribal racist sub-human male behavior--in athletes and fraternities, natch!--that leads to gang rape, based on the fact that the players hired a minority stripper deliberately. Lady, no. Just...no. Whatever points someone could make to refute your underlying assumption that GROUPS OF WHITE MEN=BAD!RACIST!RAPISTS! become utterly unnecessary when one of your examples isn't even factually correct; i.e., the players actually specified a WHITE stripper.

This is pointed out in the comments section, which then devolves into "But they were DRINKING and HIRING STRIPPERS!" versus "So where in America does that justify a 20 year jail sentence?" and we go from there to "They're privileged white guys so it's just an inconvenience to have to spend a million dollars on legal fees" to "Doesn't this make the Champions of the Downtrodden wonder what would happen to a poor minority in this situation" to "Rape stats Lie!" to "I am SHOCKED AND OUTRAGED AT THE VICIOUSNESS ON THIS THREAD AND OMG THE HUMANITY!" That last one puzzles me--as Inside Higher Ed threads go, I think this one's been pretty tame...

Look, I know we all have a tendency to seize upon and interpret current events in ways that resonate with our world view, and to use these events to prove our larger social arguments. But here's the thing--when one of our pet examples turns out not to be such a good example, maybe we should let go of it and move on.

But what do I know? I'm knee deep in dead birds and dog piss.

Maybe tomorrow will be better.

Ah, Augmentin. Balm of my Soul

Yep, that's two straight posts with titles lauding the efficacy of over-the-counter and prescription medications. My mother is convinced that I have a nose fungus, and that's why I keep coming down with sinus infections. I'm convinced that I just have tiny, tiny sinus cavities that won't drain and allergic rhinitis, which just means that while I don't technically have allergies, I have allergic reactions to just about everything in the air, which makes my sinuses run, and then clog, and then get infected.

Bottom line? Every two months I feel like I've been hit with a brick, get a low grade fever, body aches, chills, and the mother of all sinus infections.

In short, I spend 24 - 28 hours before the Augmentin kicks in feeling like these people look.

And that's no way to spend your days, people. Trust me.

Dayquil, My Savior

Okay, I'm just gonna let this out: I am COMPLETELY OVER dog ownership. Seriously. I love dogs, but I will never, ever have another one, and not because I think that the one I have now, Gertie the Weiner-Beagle from hell, is irreplaceable. Nope. It's because Gertie the Weiner-Beagle and her 14 years worth of bizarre medical problems, food-related trauma, and random acts of stupidity have finally convinced me that I will be better off as a cat person, even if my cat regularly perfoms rabbit decapitations and snake ceasarians on my sidewalk, and has a sinking eyeball. Compared to Gertie, Keat is so low-maintenance as to be nearly invisible.

"So, what does this have to do with DayQuil consumption?" you may rightly ask.

Come with me, friends, on a journey to last night.....

Gertie has recently been diagnosed with Cushing's disease. Long story short--her body is producing many, many steroids, which cause symptoms like lethargy, increased water consumption, and lots of pee. The treatment is $5 per pill, AFTER a couple hundred dollars worth of testing and then another couple hundred dollars worth of re-testing to make sure we got the dosage right. Okay. The pills are only given weekly, so after the initial outlay, $20 bucks per month in the interest of clean carpets is something I'll be willing to do for a while--maybe. But that's neither here nor there, as we haven't gotten to the testing and treatment yet (by "recently diagnosed," I mean "this Monday.")

In the meantime, I've been offsetting the copious pee problem by sleeping with one ear alert for the tiniest bit of movement from under the bed, where Gertie sleeps. And therein begins our tale.

At 4:19 a.m., there was under-bed stirring. I checked the clock, deduced that if I let the dog pee now I'd have enough time for a decent REM cycle before the alarm went off, and so I followed Gertie to the kitchen, waited for her to drink some water, then let her out.

Then I waited. And waited. She'd done her business immediately, but seemed to be stuck sniffing a blade of grass beside the sidewalk. I opened the door, leaned out, and snapped my fingers at her, but was ignored. So I peered cautiously around, because I was in only a nightshirt and underwear, and then dashed quickly outside and, balancing on one leg on the sidewalk (didn't want wet feet in addition to cold feet), poked the dog with the big toe on my other foot. She moved away from what she'd been sniffing, and I recognized one of The Boy's shoes, which he had left on the porch after a mud incident. I checked the porch - both shoes were missing.

Suddenly, the jingling sound of dog tags could be heard approaching from the darkness, and the next-door-neighbor's dog came flying over, drooling and jumping and generally being a big, stupid, half-boxer mutt puppy who had apparently climbed out of his pen and was in the process of stealing The Boy's shoes.

He wanted the second shoe. He stepped on Gertie, who squeaked, and then it was on. The rest was a blur. Just picture a 30-something brunette woman in underwear roaring around the front yard brandishing a toddler size 12 shoe at a bounding, barking mutt, followed by a short brown blur of growling fur and teeth at 4:30 in the morning, and you'll get the general idea. Not a pretty sight.

Needless to say, impromptu front-yard dog aerobics in 30 degree weather at 4:30 a.m. make it a bit difficult to get back to sleep immediately. Thus the DayQuil.

And my decision to become a cat person.

When Zombies Attack

So while everyone else was watching the marathon of self-congratulation that is the Oscars, I watched Land of the Dead, the final installment of Romero's zombie-fest. I felt it was an appropriate homage to Hollywood, plus I like zombie movies.

Or I DID, until this one. See, I was hoping against hope that all those quotes from Romero about "social commentary in the form of rotting corpses" wouldn't really pan out. Not because I don't think you can't read social commentary into Night of the Living Dead, because you totally can, and I actually enjoy reading articles about what our love of zombie movies tells us about society's hidden fears, but because if what Romero was spouting about his intentions with this movie were true, then it definitely ran the risk of being a bunch of heavy-handed stupidity.

And lo, about 20 minutes into the film, heavy-handed stupidity arrived, sat down on my sofa, popped open a beer, and proceeded to belch and scratch its way through the rest of the movie.

The premise was okay--bands of humans fortifying themselves against the dead, who, having been around for a while, are actually starting to learn again. Life goes on. Yadda yadda, insert tired, 60's era trope about "who are the real zombies, dude?" here.

But here's the thing--Romero tries too hard to force the viewer to identify with the populist everyman, whose entire motivation is to get the hell as far away from everyone else as possible. Dennis Hopper's character--the overlord in this little morality play--is completely one-dimensional, as though just putting a rich white guy on screen is enough to make the audience take one look at him and scream "THERE'S THE REAL EVIL, MAAAAANNN!"

And the ending? Where populist everyman DOESN'T destroy the zombies because "They're just looking for somewhere to go?" Um. What. The. Hell.

Note to everyone: Zombies will EAT you. They aren't sympathetic. Ever. They are the BAD GUYS. Populist everyman just watched a herd of them chow down on the "friends" that he had just finished passionately rousing everyone to save, and now he won't finish them off to prevent them from doing it again? So the living dead cheerleader figured out how to pull the trigger on an AK. Isn't that MORE of a reason to blow her head off? What, it's not enough that we're expected to understand the repressed rage of the undead at being considered second-class citizens, we have to leave them to create a zombie utopia in the ruins of a luxury high-rise?

What kind of dumb, half-assed moral relativism is this, anyway?

Plus the internal logic doesn't work--populist everyman seems to think that the zombies just want a home, dude. But that's wrong, because zombies have to eat, they only eat people, and if the people have fled, the zombies will have to follow them. I know, logic in a zombie movie. But I can only suspend disbelief so far--zombies existing and munching on human entrails? Fine. Humans suddenly deciding that the zombies are just, like, misunderstood ciphers for the underclass? Dear God, no.

Bottom line: If I have to choose between the soulless capitalist Dennis Hopper and an undead revolutionary, I'm going with Hopper EVERY TIME.

Void

Truly this week I got nuthin'. I can't seem to muster even a whiff of outrage at any of the "controversial" stuff I'm reading, aldaily isn't interesting, nor are Inside Higher Ed or the Chronicle. Pretty much it is the bleak midwinter, except for the part where it's 70 degrees outside today.

Perhaps it's burnout. I've read so many breathless accounts of The Horrors of Global Warming and It's All Our Fault that my only response now is something along the lines of "Call me when I need a boat and some SPF 100, 'cause I've got elsewhere to be." Note to everyone - telling people over and over again to freak out has the curious effect of numbing people to the thing they're supposed to be freaking out over. But maybe I just need some B12 to bring my Constant Panic Levels up to the normal range.

The Nifong situation has now devolved so far into self-parody that I can't contribute anything to the conversation except "read this blog regularly." As a corollary to that, the inability of the faculty involved in the "rush to judgement" to do anything beyond call KC Johnson a "right-winger" when he's a registered Democrat who supports Obama is just more of the same old, same old.

And to top it all off, Supernatural is a rerun.

I'd drown my sorrows in a Grande Skim Mocha, except I can't have chocolate.

Hopefully I'll be less morose tomorrow.

Post-Mortem

Well, the play was fabulous. We had Promenade seating, which, if you read Hublet's posts, means that we were onstage with the actors during the performance. The setting for the first Act was a 1950's nightclub on New Year's Eve, so as we entered the stage we got champagne to drink, and we milled around--the actors made small talk and asked audience members to dance--until the performance started with a rousing chorus of Auld Lang Syne. I got to hold hands and sing with Antigonus, who later was eaten by a bear.

Actually being onstage made everything much more visceral--there was still a fourth wall, but it was like eavesdropping on someone's conversation instead of watching a performance. So Hublet and I stood up for 3 1/2 hours, paid $50 per person for the privilege, and enjoyed every minute of it!

And if you ever get the opportunity to do something like that, do it, but don't lock your knees--one chick passed out halfway through Act I.

Great Shakes

To paraphrase Jane Austen, I am all excitement! This weeked Hublet and I will make our yearly sojourn to Davidson to see the RSC doing The Winter's Tale. You can see Hublet's account of taking a bunch of rural high-schoolers to my alma mater last weekend to see Pericles here, here, and here. Suffice it to say that Shakespeare's got nothing on a bunch of high school girls, drama-wise.

The RSC residency program at Davidson runs through 2008. It's not an understatement to say I'll be totally bummed out when it's over.

Tizzy-ville

So every day this week I've gotten mildly up in arms about something, but haven't managed to commit any of it to the blog.

Question - was the middle half of the homepage missing for a couple of days? I couldn't click on comments or see the text - it was like a giant tube of white-out had been smeared across the middle of the page. And I lack the blog-fu to figure out what made that happen.

Anyway, since I can't seem to gather my thoughts enough to create one coherent post about any one topic, here's a list of quick takes:

1. RE: the Edwards blogatrice incident - makes Edwards look like he didn't do his homework, makes me wonder if it's possible for politicians to co-opt the fringier online parts of their party in the first place, and why they would even want to, really. Seems like every time it happens there's fallout or trauma or payola scandals or something else that takes the spotlight off the candidate's message. And politicians can't afford that sort of crap.

2. Valentine's Day - it's all been said. February is a stupid month, and slapping a lacy, pink, candy-coated fake shell of a holiday on the bleak ass-end of winter sets my teeth on edge. I have no romance in me in February, nor do I want to experience anything lovey-dovey. The only thing I need heating up in February is an Irish coffee.

3. My colleague who cannot understand that in a press release, it's usually a good idea to answer the questions who, what, when, where, why and how at the BEGINNING of the release. What does one do with a person whose every release over a 2 year period ignores the standard format, even when said format is explained painstakingly by every person in the office? Further, what does one do with such a person when said person's response to each gentle correction is to burst into tears and shriek about how her family says she's a good writer? FYI - We had to table my suggestion involving the hot poker, as open heating elements are banned in the office.

4. The postmodern trend toward argument rehabilitation, as seen in the actions of academics and protesters at Duke. So now the words you wrote weren't actually what you meant--and you're literature professors. Okey-dokey.

URg.

Things you don't want to hear in the morning, especially after a rough night marked by the spectral appearance of your son IMMEDIATELY IN FRONT OF YOUR FACE AT 3:00 a.m. and the resultant adrenaline rush that means you can't get back to sleep for an hour because you're lying awake and wondering where the external shutoff to your home's water supply is just in case the pipes freeze and burst, and then when you do fall asleep you dream you're a waitress with a broken leg and you're hopping around trying to take care of your tables but you can't find your pad and pen and everyone is pissed off at you...SO you end up getting about 4 hours sleep:

1. "The dog pooped in the floor." This little gem delivered to me as I tried in vain to get facial cleanser out of my eyes while stumbling around in the shower.

2. "Mommy, I dropped my squishy football!"
"Where?"
"In the potty!"
"Before or after you peed?"
"After!"
"Before or after you flushed?"
"Before!"

Great. Did I mention I've been off caffeine for a month? Did I also mention that I am hearing the siren song of Starbucks right about now? Yeah.

I'm gonna get a cup of joe and lock myself in my office with my fuzzy blanket and socks (yes, I keep these things in a drawer for days like this) and I DEFY anyone to bother me!

So there.

Serious as a heart...well, that might be in poor taste

In case you don't have kids or you've been living without access to any information medium for the past few days, February kicks off the American Heart Association's big fundraising drive.

As part of the effort, The Boy's school is going to participate in the Jump Rope for Heart event, and so The Boy is raising money. He even has a personalized webpage that will record donations in his name. We're trying to raise $100 for the cause before Feb. 12. Our family is small, and our goals are therefore modest.

I'm posting this for friends or family who may be inclined to donate a couple of bucks--or even for friendly lurkers who may have longed to show appreciation for my rapier wit (ahem) and the fact that I don't do ads, or readership drives, or any of that stuff. And no, you can't subtract money from the donations for posts of mine that you feel have been sub-par--a mean email will suffice.

You can go to this webpage and donate securely, and The Boy gets the credit, and maybe even a free t-shirt! It's the little things, folks. But seriously, even if you don't donate online, think about giving to your local participants--I don't know about you, but there are a few folks in my life who wouldn't be here if it weren't for the AHA's research. So good cause, yadda yadda, I'm done preaching.

CAVEAT: Apparently the online donations are for $25 or more, so if you want to give less, go local!

This is Beautiful

My favorite items on this list:

The WTC towers fell in what was obviously a controlled demolition. The largest, messiest, deadliest, most witnessed, most mismanaged, most ill-timed, most poorly executed, and most uncontrolled controlled demolition in history.

And this:

The government planted explosives at the exact aircraft impact sites of the Pentagon and both WTC towers, the explosives and activity surrounding their placement went completely unnoticed, the rigging of the explosives was unharmed by the aircraft impacts, and they went off exactly when planned.

And this:

Somehow orchestrating the hijacking of multiple airliners to have them crash at explosive-rigged sites was more effective than just setting off the explosives by themselves in the first place.

Hee! Read the links associated with the list for maximum hilarity.

You know, the part of me that despairs at the gullibility of dumb angry people is horrified that these kinds of lists are even necessary, but the part of me that kind of likes to point and laugh at dumb angry people (yeah, yeah, I'm horrible, sue me) is happy that it exists.

Shamelessly stolen from here.

Comments Up. WTF

oooookayyy,

Now comments seem to be working, AFTER I'd fiddled with everything I could think to fiddle with and resigned myself to creating a new blog from scratch.

Arg.

Will try to post something mildly interesting/entertaining soon, but here's something to make you feel better about your parenting choices: I am incapable of suppressing my laughter when my son says "penis head." I know I should be an adult about it, but the first time he said it--and it was totally my fault for insisting that he start using the proper name for his piece-parts instead of "wee-wee"--I just guffawed.

If you've been around a 5-year-old, you know what happens when you give them that sort of response. But "penis-head" is apparently my poker face's Waterloo. Even typing it makes me giggle.

So, having lost the moral high ground without even a struggle, I had to settle for the "we don't say 'penis head, because it's ugly, and especially not in public" speech, and then leave the room before I lost all control of my laughter. Again.

Proof positive that someone with the mental age of 12 can at least try to raise a child.

Comments Down

Hey all -

Sorry the comments are hosed - I've gotten some cool responses to my last post I'd like to share. Will do later.

In the meantime, if you need to get ahold of me, it's bigarm at bigarmwoman dot com.

Funniest Thing I Read Today

"I know it's been a while, but listen -- I've been real busy with things. And I know a lot of y'all think I've been acting real trashy since Kevin and I split up, but listen, it was a ROUGH TWO YEARS THERE. Sometimes a girl just needs to take her vagina out for some air, and that's all I was doing, so maybe you shouldn't judge me so much because if you'd been married to Kevin Federline for however long we were married, you would go on a binge later too."

From here.

And in Other Cat-Related News, I think I finally managed to get 3/4 of a dose of peevish cat's medicine down her gullet. There was a combo of burrito wrapping and scruff grabbing and head holding, and she does this annoying tongue flapping thing, but it's improvement, folks! Improvement!

Update and Question of the Day

So the cat has toxoplasmosis, which they pretty much all get at some point--no biggie, unless you're pregnant and changing litter boxes. Given my cat-filled girlhood, I've probably already had the virus anyway. So, we learn something new every day--sinking eyeballs can be a symptom of toxoplasmosis. Anyhoo, now in addition to the cream and the eye drops, I have to force 2ml of nasty liquid antibiotic down her throat twice a day. She is a very peevish cat. And will be for the next 28 DAYS, because that's how long I have to give her this medication. Dear God.

Question of the day, for those of you following the Duke lacrosse "thing"--is the DA fiendishly clever and cynical about vote-getting, or scarily incompetent? Neither answer will make me happy, btw.

Read this blog and decide for yourselves.

Exactly

Finally, a one-sentence summation of why Philip Pullman's books have really never done it for me:

"...while Pullman’s imagined worlds are powerfully eerie, his characters are flat, humorless and generally annoying."

Exactly. While it's a good thing to have humorless and annoying characters within a fantasy series, they're really only useful as foils. When you would happily watch any of the main characters in a three-book series drawn and quartered, however, that might indicate a problem with the concept.

Cat's Eye

You know, I may not be the most attentive mom sometimes--after all, I'm the one who thought my husband was overreacting about the Boy's July head wound that resulted in 2 metal staples being placed in his scalp--but I'm damn near telepathic when it comes to detecting pet weirdness.

Well, except when the pet in question has managed to tuck a deer leg beneath my computer desk, but really, that was an anomaly.

So anyway, a week or so before we were to engage in our 2006 Christmas Extravaganza, I noticed that the cat's left eye looked, well, like it was sinking into her head. Not much, but something seemed off. But there was no redness, no discharge, she was eating and drinking and killing moles like there was no tomorrow, so I thought, "Maybe I just haven't paid attention to her in so long I've forgotten what she looks like," and moved on.

But then the eye looked normal. Then it looked all sinky again. Normal, sinky, normal, sinky. So when I took her to the vet to be boarded, I decided to go with my gut and ask them to check out her left eye. You should have seen the look the receptionist gave me when under SYMPTOMS I had written "Sinking left eyeball." Yes, I realize I communicate for a living. But I'm also more than a little evil, and like to present my more highly-paid fellow citizens with an occasional challenge. Besides, it was the most accurate description I could come up with.

Off we went to Asheville, and when I didn't receive a call from the vet, I figured I'd just have to contend with more strange looks when I went to retrieve the cat, which we did at the tail end of a marathon 6 hour journey on Friday, which included a pit stop by my folks' house to pick up the dog, unpacking and repacking the car in their driveway, and ill-considered Diet Dr. Pepper consumption that resulted in a cranky, tired, me with a full, full bladder when we popped into the vet's office.

Which was deserted. Seriously. The Boy and I wandered around for a good 5 minutes, opening the door repeatedly so that the electronic DING would alert the vet to our presence.

Finally, the receptionist's 9 year old daughter appeared and stared at us for a few minutes before leaving, ostensibly to retrieve her mom.

Five minutes later.

So we're paying the hundred and fifty bucks for the diagnostics and the boarding and the receptionist says, "The vet has some medications for the cat and she wants to talk to you."

Another 20 minutes pass. Lots more patients are coming in. Hublet and the dog are wandering the parking lot, and the dog is totally stressing out, because vet visits tend to be frequent and unpleasant for canines who will consume entire pounds of raw bacon at one sitting.

Finally, the vet comes in. To say that this vet is earnest is like mentioning that Napoleon might have been sensitive about his height. She's also about twelve.
She launches into a ten minute monologue about the third eyelid and the infection, and it takes her at least that long to get to the point, which is: third eyelid infected; this infection tends to be a symptom of something else, but I didn't do any more diagnostics because I wanted to talk to you first.

Sigh. As I am not the model of patience, my instinctive response was, "Well, you could have CALLED me and talked to me about it, and then I would have told you to go ahead and do a diagnostic and treat the cat so that I wouldn't have to drag her sorry ass back up here again, because my cat and car trips DO NOT MIX, like AT ALL, and you're not the one who has to drive around with a yowling feline acting like her intestines are being extracted through her nostrils every time we make this trip, plus I wouldn't have had to sit here for thirty minutes with a REALLY FULL BLADDER waiting for you to SPIT IT OUT ALREADY, and by the way, how much more is this going to cost, dammit?", but as I am a public relations professional, I managed to spin that a bit.

So, an additional $132 and fifteen minutes later, I retrieved a disgruntled cat with a really dialated left eyeball, drops and cream for said eyeball, and was given instructions to return to the office on Tuesday--which means Hublet will have to beat feet tomorrow to pick up the Boy, stuff the cat into a carrier, and drag her and her yowling self to the vet to discover whether or not I will have to adminsiter yet more medication to a CAT, which is about as much fun as stabbing yourself repeatedly in the eye with a nail file, especially when the cat has a tongue like a gecko's and the ability to lick eye ointment which makes her foam at the mouth like Cujo, and can I just reiterate that all of this could have been avoided with ONE PHONE CALL?!?!

I can? Good. Makes me feel better.

Is it 2007 yet?

Oh. My. God.

Christmas has finally ended at my house--we just returned from visiting the brother and sister-in-law today and The Boy has officially run out of gifts to be opened. He's been doing this sporadically since December 15, so in my considered opinion it's about Freaking Time!

On a serious note: Best Christmas Ever! The Big Arm household has finally entered the era of high speed wireless internet access, and may I just say that the last barrier to my burgeoning internet addiction--crappy dialup on a desktop--is gone. I expect to have the cerebral shunt installed sometime in 2007, so that I can stay online all the time.

Also, I am apparently a total girl, because Hublet came through with some spiffy jewelry (that he purchased all by himself, with a minimum amount of trauma to his manhood), and I lurve it.

I spent the remainder of this afternoon de-Christmasing the house, because the Real, Live Tree that the Boy demanded had given up the ghost sometime around December 26, and was emitting a scent that was decidedly NOT on the Yankee Candle Company's inventory.

So, to sum up--sorry I've been AWOL, life is awesome, and I have managed to save the household and its occupants from Death By Fraser Fir Fumes.

2007 is already shaping up nicely.

Of Mucous and Reindeer Heads

As you may know, we went to Camden this past weekend to see 26 of my nearest and dearest relatives at the yearly South Carolina free-for-all known as Aunt Pat's Christmas. These are the relatives that have been involved in assorted misadventures involving lion ownership, gunplay on the highway, moonshine and shotguns, and haunted houses. It's good to be a southerner.

The Boy had developed a slight cough before we left. But it was slight. Barely even worth mentioning.

We drove down Friday night, and slept in a hotel room with one of those stupid heater/air-conditioning units that doesn't have a thermostat, so you're up and down all night either turning it off or on or fiddling with the knobs.

I slept in the bed with The Boy and his slight cough.

The next day we visited my cousin on vicodin (the cousin, not us, although some vicodin would have been useful once we crammed all 26 of us inside a confined area), ate a big meal, opened some gifts, and then got back in the car and drove back to Raleigh to make it in time for Sunday's Bell Ringing and Preschool Christmas Pageant Extravaganza, in which I totally lost my place mid-piece, the piano accompianist totally forgot to show up in time to play the first piece, the organist got about 3 measures ahead--we had a guest organist, because our regular organist fell and broke his hand--and some other kid tried to take my kid's place as the third wise man, prompting the THAT MOM glare of doom from me until the situation was rectified. I did not spend 3 hours in a car with an excitable wise-man-to-be just to be thwarted by some random Kindergartener. Seriously. Talk to me about Christmas cheer and assorted mushy nonsense AFTER I successfully procure the video of the 3 kings that my mother threatened me about.

The Boy's cough was a little worse. And I was feeling a bit, shall we say, stuffy. But I soldiered on. After all, I had gifts to wrap and crap to bake and a house to clean and Target to visit.

Welcome to Monday. And a call from the school about my bronchially-challenged son. And a call from an astro-physicist about a seriously kickass discovery. And a call from some very earnest scientists concerning biomass, ethanol, and saving the world.

Yeah. But mucous takes precedence, so home I went. Then there was a marathon trip in which I tried to procure actual Sudafed, not the fake crap that doesn't work, then some baking, and Christmas card addressing, and cleaning, and more Sudafed for me.

Tuesday found Hublet at home with The Boy, and he was secretly happy about that, because his school is in the throes of pre-Christmas vacation gooberness. Cue more baking and Christmas cheer. And more Sudafed. And a call from my mom who has come down with whatever it was The Boy has.

Today finds me running dangerously low on Sudafed, freaking out about astrophysics, and preparing to head to The Boy's Kindgergarten to make Rudolph heads out of Wonder Bread, Peanut Butter, M&Ms and pretzels.

So if you don't hear from me any more this week, it's because I'm either
a) Dead from Mucous and lack of Sudafed, or
b) Dead from Christmas cheer-related activities, or
c) Sitting comatose in front of the TV watching Little People, Big World and drinking Irish Coffees by the gallon.

Just so you know.

Weekend!

Well, we're off to Camden for an overnight and then back here for bell ringing and Christmas pageanting and the whole middle America Norman Rockwell thing, provided I don't get all ENTJ, type-A out of control with the list-checking and the baking and the travelling and the volunteering, and start body-checking my fellow shoppers at the local Target...

See, that's why I went for a 30 minute massage at lunch today. Thanks for the gift certificate, Hublet! Because after a tiny woman with iron hands spends a full half-hour crushing the muscles in my neck and shoulders into buttery smoothness, everything--even an impending 3 hour drive with an irritable Boy who is most likely coming down with some hideous contagious illness that will infect every elderly person in my family--is just fine.

And as today is Hublet's birthday, I figure the least I can do is be relaxed for twelve hours or so.

Back Monday.

Our Something, Who Art Located Somewhere...

So it's Sunday morning, and the family has managed to make it to church on time. This is a banner day, indeed, because it means that we're able to hear the scripture that the lesson will be based upon, instead of just wandering in to listen to Sermon Without Context. What can I say, I'm big on context.

So we listen to a sermon chock full o' real-life examples and touching homilies and all that, and it is a powerful sermon indeed, until about halfway through it when Hublet leans over to me and says, "I can't take it. He's doing it again and I can't not notice it, and it's driving me slowly insane."

I nod and sigh, because I know what he's talking about, and while it seems like a small, nitpicky thing on the surface, it really, really isn't.

Our preacher delivers his sermons without ever using a pronoun in reference to God.

Think about that for a minute, and ruminate on the cornucopia of stupid, awkward sentence constructions that result, constructions like:

"God says that God wants you to be happy! God knows God's will better than anyone else, and we should listen to God, because God says that God will always be with us!"

Again, seems nitpicky on the surface, right? But the problem is twofold:

First, it's jarring to listen to, and yanks you right out of the sermon, because it's like God has suddenly become a pro athlete who constantly refers to himself in the third person, and second, once you notice that the preacher is doing this, you start to wonder why.

And if you're me, this will piss. you. off.

What, exactly, is wrong with using the pronoun "He" in reference to God? We sing about God the Father in the Doxology, we recite the Lord's Prayer, wherein we accurately locate our deity in heaven and honor HIS name, so why, in the name of all that is holy (literally) can we not refer to God as He in a sermon?

Do Methodists actually think that God might be female? Have we suddenly co-opted the cult of Astarte, the multi-breasted earth goddess, and so must be sensitive to the needs of the she-deity? Are we afraid that women in our congregation just haven't realized that God might be male, and so our preacher is protecting us from a sudden shock? Is a pronoun not holy enough to confer the greatness of the Almighty? Is the preacher afraid that we may forget WHO HE'S TALKING ABOUT WHILE WE'RE IN CHURCH? What? What is the purpose of doing this? Just--WHAT? Grammatically it's a nightmare, theologically it's unnecessary if you're a Methodist, and medically, I believe the practice of removing pronouns from the sermon may result in spontaneous brain aneurysms in English majors within the congregation.

See, there's already a church for folks who like to be open about the gender of the Almighty--it's called the Unitarian church, and there are several conveniently located nearby.

As for the rest of it...God help me.

OMFG.

I'll start this on a serious note - someone please get Lindsay Lohan checked into a facility somewhere. Erratic behavior, crazed drunken public displays, weird hyper-paranoid emails that display an amazingly over-evolved sense of self-importance--these things are funny, but not when the person doing them obviously needs help. So someone? Tackle her and chain her to a detox center for a year or two. And ship her mother to Zimbabwe while you're at it.

However, there is a silver lining to every cloud of drug-addled celebrity crazy. In this case, the ramblings of Lohan can be used as an effective teaching tool by high school english teachers on how NOT to structure an argument, spell, or play fast and loose with the rules of grammar.

Are you listening, Hublet?

Here's the text of the email.

And here, some people take a stab at editing/grading it. The beauty of the exercise is that even if you're a disaffected, non-academically-engaged 10th grader, you can probably locate at least ten errors in the missive. So Ms. Lohan is correct about her influence on the younger generation--she improves their self-esteem by making them feel smarter than she is!

Get some help, Lohan, before you're too far gone for even Al Gore to save.

Random Weirdness

Those of you who surf at odd hours may have noticed the bizarro-world comment spam that appeared on the previous entry--Marc did, and commented that I tend to attract my fair share of weirdos. I usually keep all the nutbar comments around for the perverse humor I take from them, but I had to delete that one, because it was just too freaking long to deal with. Maybe I'll start saving them into a Compilation of Crazy, and publish excerpts every now and again.

I do tend to attract random weirdness on this blog, which I find sort of odd considering its relatively low profile. I mean, I would expect my more opinionated blog brethren and sistren to get a lot of trolls and cranks, but I'm not exactly what you'd call a magnet for controversy. But then again, this sort of thing happens to me in real life A LOT.

I don't know what it is about me, but people who are in the throes of emotional trauma or who have deep-seated psychological problems tend to home in on me like delusional pigeons. It happens to me a lot when I'm shopping--random people come up and ask me for advice, and then launch into these sometimes truly horrifying tales of woe, and I'm just standing there wondering how the hell I'm supposed to recommend a recipe for frozen chicken when this 80 year-old-man is telling me that it's the government's fault that he lost his wife and now he has to cook for one and doesn't know how to do it. See? Tragic, yes, but also delusional, because his wife, from what I could tell from his commentary had perished of old age, not black helicopter induced cancer. And that's a fairly ordinary 5 minute encounter in the frozen foods section of the local BJs--if you're me, that is.

It used to be that random children tended to flock toward me. This was when I was 20 or so and hated all things child-related with a fiery passion. My friends and I could be in the middle of a mall or restaurant, when suddenly a child would materialize at my elbow and either offer me a pre-licked lollipop or ask me to tie their shoe or introduce me to their Woobie Bear. And it was always me, never my maternally-inclined friends or any other convenient grownup.

Now it's random grown-ups. I don't think I have a particularly approachable air about me, I don't make eye contact with strangers, and generally these people have to go out of their way to get my attention, when there are 4 or 5 other more easily reachable folks nearby. It's either karma biting me in the ass or some weird vibe I put out. And it must be a vibe that translates to the internet.

On the bright side, it does provide plenty of blog fodder.

Hey! That's Me!

Just got back and am digging out from under approximately 500 pR0n spam messages, to discover that a reporter from the NYT had tried to contact me last week about a story on the burgeoning field of Fat Studies. Yes, I used burgeoning. I am a bad, bad person, and will have lots of time to think about snarky word choice as I roast in hell.

Needless to say, I missed that boat, but she did quote my blog - thanks to commenter Weezy for bringing it to my attention.

The article is here (and you'll have to register). I am briefly mentioned on page 2. Weird.

Sometimes I forget that typing words and sending them into the void means that other people may actually read them.

But enough about me - well, that's a total lie, since this entire blog is about me, and sharing my unique flowerhood with the world at large, but anyway, you get the point.

I was all set to talk about the latest feminist manifesto from the latest feminist scholar when I came upon a set of reviews for her book here, but as I finished reading the oh-so-cleverly turned phrases and bits of navel gazing that pass for literary criticism these days I was left with a big fat feeling of "so what?"

Seriously, I have reached critical ennui with the whole "omgwtfbbq women should/shouldn't work/have kids/write vagina monologues/vote a certain way" debate, because it dawns on me that the debate isn't really about women anymore so much as it's about the fact that we all think happiness is a fundamental right, and one that we shouldn't have to work or sacrifice for.

All this puling about ladies with PhDs who are staying home or fighting the boardroom fight is merely projection on a truly cosmic scale. As though feminism's legacy, instead of the freedom to choose a course to pursue, is just a license to worry that what you're pursuing isn't valid, and to validate it by tearing down the other side. And you can't lay that off on society or the patriarchy, kids. It's all on you.

I suppose we should at least take comfort in the fact that we're doing what men have been doing since time immemorial. Ahh, I love the smell of gender equality in the morning. Smells like progress.

MIA

Just popping in to say sorry I've been MIA, but it looks like it's gonna stay that way until after Thanksgiving.

However, I am looking forward to the holiday season, mainly because at this year's ginormous family Christmas gathering Hublet and I get to stay at my cousin's house in Camden, and my cousin and his wife believe it's haunted. Call the Ghost Hunters! So that'll be something different, and will help me keep my mind off of the fact that haunted or not, 200 year old homes are all DEFINITELY drafty. My wool socks are already packed.

I will be spending my post-turkey, pre-Christmas time cleaning the carpet and attending approximately 437 birthday parties for newly-minted 5 and 6-year-olds. From time to time I pause to ruminate on why I have no social life, and then I'm reminded that my social life currently consists of toting my son, aka the Life of the Freaking Party, to various indoor party palaces. Which, as long as there's an occasional foray to the local Pump it Up, is okay with me.

And I leave you with this quote to ponder:

“Proposing that Jane Austen was a lesbian or Sophocles a cross-dresser,” writes the literary theorist Terry Eagleton, “is one way for those who have nothing especially stunning to say about irony or tragic fate to muscle in on the literary scene. It is rather like being praised as an eminent geographer for finding your way to the bathroom.”

from this article.

I Don't Even Know What Day it is

Suffice it to say this week has been hectic and strange, thus the lack of posting. And it won't get better - today we're heading out of town to attend Hublet's grandmother's funeral. She passed away from a stroke at age 97, and Hublet remembers her here.

Have a good weekend - perhaps my brain will be firing on more than one cylinder next week.

Signs that perhaps I need a vacation

1. Painting the floor of my den. The CARPETED floor. With an entire quart of American Tradition flat latex in the subltly lovely shade of "Tea Biscuit." My bathroom, incidentally, looks very nice with what I was able to scrape off the carpet and apply to the walls. My hair looks good with its patina of Tea Biscuit, as well. Thanks for asking. And FYI? If the chick at the Lowe's paint counter asks you if you want clamps on the paint can? Say yes. Because my response--"No, I'll be opening it as soon as I get home"--while technically true, didn't take into account the many ways in which "opening paint as soon as I get home" could be construed by the universe. Joke's on me, I guess.

2. Getting a little too excited about gas station squeegee prowess as regards my sparkling windsheild and forgetting to, you know, remove the gas pump from my car before driving away. Hilarity? Oh, it ensued. Fortunately I did remember to put the car in Park before leaping out of it to replace the pump and my gas cap. It was a near thing, however.

3. Death of the TiVo! Loss of unwatched Veronica Mars! No TiVo or satellite TV for at least ONE WHOLE DAY! No, seriously. You don't understand. It's Thursday, and now I will have to settle for watching my misty-eyed manly demon hunters get all misty-eyed and manly on the craptastic tiny TV with NO SATELLITE CONNECTION and rabbit ears! I only have 3 shows that I watch regularly, people. And you don't even want to see what Hublet will become without access to cable sports and news. This is ugly.

Friday Vent

No, not me. I'm actually feeling inexplicably chipper--well, okay, maybe it's not so inexplicable when you factor in the Grande Skim Light-Whip Mocha breakfast in a recyclable, earth-friendly cup I purchased this a.m.--but for those of you who aren't, Emily's new staple of Friday, the Friday F*** Off Thread, is up and running.

Vent about the piddly aspects of modern life that drive you around the bend. Even if you don't vent, reading the venting of others will certainly cheer you up. I know I always feel better afterward. Cleansed, even.

Because the UN Said So, Dammit!

This article makes me laugh, because the basic premise is that Norwegians need to stop whining about problems with their government because the United Nations have ranked them as the best country to live in.

No, seriously. Here's the actual lede:

The United Nations ranked Norway as the best country to live in for a sixth consecutive year Thursday, prompting the country's aid minister to tell Norwegians to stop whining about wanting more.

More what, you ask?

Norwegians often complain of high taxes and of weaknesses in their cradle-to-grave welfare state, such as waiting lists at hospitals and a shortage of public care for both children and the elderly.

Seems to me they're actually asking for less, then, at least in terms of taxes. Fortunately, The Government™ has the solution - give more of your money!

Solheim said instead of complaining, Norwegians should work on solving those problems, and to share their wealth with poorer countries.

Proving that no matter where you live, politically tone-deaf politicians are a constant.

Civic Doody

Voted. Rah. Not much else to say on that score--my county is pretty republican, except we have a democratic congressman. Typical North Carolina politics, really. Democrats here probably wouldn't pass muster with the Kos crowd--well, democrats who actually get elected here, anyway. I'm sure there are a few un-electable ones that those folks would love. But I digress.

The main reason I voted was to cast my ballot for our sheriff, who just amuses the hell out of me.

As usual, election day has me fantasizing about my dream government, which would consist of a bunch of people whose main salient features would be (in order):

1. Handling bad guys

and

2. Leaving me the hell alone.

Really, that's it. I'm not a complicated gal.

Sadly, I am apparently doomed to disappointment. At least our sheriff is interesting--I just hope he doesn't get emotionally invested in being a "character" and just concentrates on getting rid of the meth labs and cockfighting.

Pumpkinhead, Ho!

I am tired, I hate rain, and I'm not entirely sure what the hell the little Greek chemist on my tape recorder is trying to tell me about cellulose as I sit here trying to transcribe the conversation.

But things are looking up - The SciFi channel will be airing its very own Pumpkinhead sequel on Saturday night. I must disclose my love for Pumpkinhead, though I refuse to acknowledge the original sequel, Pumpkinhead: Bloodwings, because What The Hell Was That Even About? In fact, until a friend of mine mentioned it yesterday, I had managed to forget that it even existed. Thanks for reminding me, friend.

However, this one will have Lance Henriksen in it, and I love him. He's what, 92 years old and still doesn't look much older than he did in 1989. So, yay! Bring on the cheesy Halloween goodness!

Lite Tuesday Reading

This pretty much sums up my feelings about everyone and everything right now.

Not that I'm bitter.

Thought for the Day

The amount of fun that you will have at a high school reunion is inversely proportional to how much of high school you remember.

Since I can barely remember the names of the people I work with on a daily basis, let alone the Drah-ma of decades past, I had a really good time. Also, the women were a lot better preserved than the men--it's all in the hair, people. You can be forgiven for just about anything if your hair looks good. That's why my entire anti-aging program can be summed up thus: moisturizer and hair dye. It works, and think of the money you save on plastic surgery!

And this is apropos of nothing, but on my way home from the aforementioned reunion I managed to see something stuck on a car that tops even the most vapid of bumperstickers: a pair of silver testicles (either fake, or pulled off of a local bovine and immediately plated in semi-precious metals) dangling from the nether bumper of a souped-up chevy caprice.

Yes, I just used the phrase "souped-up chevy caprice." Un-ironically. But I've got a question for the owner of the be-testicled vehicle: If your car really is as badass as you want us all to believe, would you need to adorn it with fake testicles? Yeah, that question's rhetorical.

In other news, The Boy is turning into a rather determined metrosexual. Today was picture day, and there was much sartorial deliberation, as well as a refusal to wear his hoodie because it might "mess up his hair." His hair that I have to style with gel before I blow it dry, by the way.

He also informed me in a solemn and somewhat shocked tone that the girls in his class keep trying to marry the boys. Apparently, if the girls DON'T like you, they threaten you with marriage. I will not opine on what this means for the idea of marriage for his generation, nor will I make the obvious jokes. His teacher had to make a general class announcement to the effect that no one would be marrying anyone in Kindergarten, and so the crisis was averted. For the moment, anyway.

Between the reunion and the threat of rampant kindergarten marriage, I have never been so glad to be pushing 40.

Nothing Like That Has Ever Happened to Me

Thank God.

Funniest thing I've read this week:

The Night I Saw Prince's Penis

Check the comments for a horror story about Jane's Addiction's Perry Farrell.

Makes me unaccountably happy that the only concert I've ever had front row seats for was REM. Michael Stipe is many things, but at least he wears pants that contain his parts.

Hoo boy.

Via Defamer.

What to Say, What to Say...

Gee. Should I blog about my fantastic weekend, full of actual white tablecloth food and then a fun trip to the fair with The Boy wherein we rode everything that held still long enough and managed to avoid the fried coke, or should I focus on the topical?

Decisions, decisions.

Let's see, we hit the 300 million population mark today, well, more or less--it was probably actually a while ago because of all the "folks we haven't counted," wink-wink. Cue the whining!

Madonna, ever the fashion-forward maven, adds a new accessory to her wardrobe: a small boy from Malawi! Cue the whining!

Ah, Durham, sweet Durham. You are such a wildly screwed-up town. Maybe we should give all the citizens 48 hours to evacuate and then just raze it and start over...but first, let's make all the profs at Duke read The Crucible, and see how many of them get the irony.

Hmm. Tough call.

The fair? A lot of fun, thanks for asking. I limited myself to my once-yearly corndog with mustard, which comes on a stick, thus allowing me to avoid worrying about the many and varied microbes on my hands coming into contact with my insides. Ick.

And The Boy, I am pleased to report, will ride anything. I have visions of amusement parks dancing in my head already.

Betrayed by Ovaries, Part 1 Million

Ovaries are evil. They are directly responsible for bloating, the craving of spray cheese on crackers (which leads to bloating), and now for making us spend money trying to get all gussied up.

Although, there may be an upside. When Hublet sees how much I spent on shoes today, I can always just blame my ovaries:

"I wasn't in control--my damn ovaries took over just as I entered the DSW and I came out with two more pairs of shoes in addition to the cute pair of Candies I bought over at Kohl's--heck, you're lucky I didn't toss in that extra $50 pair of hooker pumps! My ovary-fu, it is strong. Lucky for you your wife has extra anti-ovary fortitude!"

Yeah, that'll work.

No Friday Post for You

As you may know by now, stuff is blowin' up real good 'round these parts, and my job consists of getting people who know what they're talking about in touch with people who talk about what's happening. So. Am busy. And in no danger of succumbing to chlorine gas, thanks for asking.

Have a great weekend!

I'll be painting my bathroom and rewatching this week's episode of Supernatural until Hublet drags me forcibly away from the TV. Creepy clowns and angst. Good times, people.

Incidentally, Hublet and I celebrated 10 years of marriage yesterday with Chinese take-out. We'll be going on a real date to a restaurant with tablecloths and a decent wine list next weekend.

Yeah, my middle name is "Excitement!" Or "low maintenance," take your pick.

Yearly Oxford American Lovefest

It's here! The Oxford American Southern Music issue with the included Southern Music CD, this year helpfully underwritten by CMT.

Hublet and I were discussing the OA yesterday on the way home from church, and decided that they could probably completely overcome their famous monetary woes (this is the only magazine that I've been a subscriber to even when they couldn't afford to actually produce the magazine for their subscribers) if they just became a quarterly and concentrated on their best niches: music, food, art and writing. Those are the most memorable issues, and you can tell that the writers and editors really have fun producing them. But I digress.

This year's CD is typically eclectic, with everything from Tex Williams (Smoke Smoke Smoke that Cigarette) to a classical piece by the south's only notable composer, Louis Moreau Gottscalk, to a song that those of you who grew up with Schoolhouse Rock will remember (Three is a Magic Number), to some random novelty song a grocer produced with Muhammad Ali (Theme from Ali and His Gang vs. Mr. Tooth Decay).

And Drivin' and Cryin', the theme band for my senior year of college, and the reason why my son's teacher will probably be calling me at home any day now.

We started listening to the CD on Saturday morning after our traditional weekend breakfast of homemade buttermilk pancakes and bacon, and had just finished listening to that weird Muhammad Ali song, when I heard the opening notes to Drivin' and Cryin's Straight to Hell. I was immediately all "Nostalgia!" and "Wooo!" and "Listen, dear!" and totally forgot that there was a 5-year old with a mind like a sponge in the room immediately adjacent to us.

I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this. And I'm sure you'll agree that you haven't really lived until you've heard your five-year-old son bust out with "I'm goin' straight to hell, just like my mama said..." at the top of his lungs in the middle of the den. He carries a tune well, though, I'll say that for him.

So the predictable conversation ensued about appropriate word usage, and we switched over to Three is a Magic Number, because at least that way he could learn a multiplication table, and I'd feel like I'd done the whole "teachable moment" thing and the problem was solved.

At least until Sunday morning, when The Boy requested "that heck song" on the way to church.

Sing it with me, y'all, 'cause that chorus is becoming truer by the day.

Bow Before My Lame Lame-osity!

Yeah, I'm a lame-o. Between work, and being forced to confront my aging, and sundry weekend crap, I haven't really had the energy to comment on anything going on, much less attempt to be pithy or witty or even mildly amusing. I spent two hours yesterday discussing statistical modeling with profs in the stats department, for crying out loud. Excitement, she is not my friend just now.

Speaking of excitement and the current dearth thereof in my life, wanna know what the highlight of my weekend was?

My most spectacular post-church ass-plant in the church parking lot.

And it was spectacular, and completely the fault of my super cute brown sling-back heels, thank you very much.

See, we had parked streetside, since we continually arrive 15 minutes (or more) late to church. I mean it. We are ALWAYS 15 minutes late. No matter what.

So after church when I opened the rear door of the car for The Boy, I was standing in the grassy area between the sidewalk and the curb. After he was settled, I tossed my purse in after him and moved to close the door, which meant I stepped forward onto the curb, and the heel of one of my super cute brown sling-backs slipped off the curb and into the loamy soil of the perfectly manicured strip of lawn. Like a tiny yard piton, it anchored itself there, and the sudden sinking motion forced me to rock backwards.

And I just kept on rockin'. It was one of those slow-motion falls, where you have loads of time to consider your options as you travel from upright to butt-planted. As I toppled, I surveyed my surroundings, and determined that the door handle might possibly break my fall. However, the door handle was an insufficient anchor, and all I succeeded in doing was creating a noisy accompaniment to my fall as I flailed in the door's general direction.

Hublet and The Boy's attentions were finally turned to me as I landed on my butt in the grass.

Hublet managed a "Dear? What are you doing?" and The Boy asked the most salient question: "Mommy? Why is your foot in the air?"

Why, indeed, son. Why, indeed.

Sigh.

Conversations with my mother

Date: Yesterday, 2:37 p.m.
Location: My office

Me: Hello?

Mom: Hi honey, just wanted to call and check in and see if The Boy made it to his Kindergarten class okay by himself.

Me: I assume so.

Mom: Didn't you watch him?

Me: Yes, I watched him go into the school, but since I lack X-Ray vision, I was unable to discern his progress beyond that point.

Mom: Well, they would've called if he had a problem.

Me: (Having sudden visions of The Boy huddled in a broom closet, crying) Mom. All he had to do was walk down two hallways.

Mom: I'm sure you're right. (Pause) Well, I also called to tell you that I went to the doctor today about my leg. It was bothering me so much last night I couldn't sleep or anything!

Me: What did the doctor say?

Mom: Believe it or not, I have shingles!

Me: Shingles?

Mom: Yep, and they put me on antiviral medication and told me not to get around anyone under the age of 12 months.

Me: Well I guess we're safe.

Mom: You know what the doctor said?

Me: What?

Mom: They're brought on by stress.

Me: Stress.

Mom: Uh-huh.

Me: Like for instance the stress of keeping your grandson for 3 solid weeks, 2 of them at our house?

Mom: ...

Me: Even when I told you I'd take the last one off?

Me: Or the stress of staking out the school's parking lot on the first day of school like you're in Starsky and Hutch?

Me: Or the stress of cleaning out every closet in my house? Or of calling an electrician in to change a lightbulb?

Mom: But I enjoyed the stress! Well, just wanted to check in! Talk to you later! Bye!

Me: (Heavy sigh.)

Hello, September.

Oh my GOD, but this month is getting off to a helluva start. My weekend involved reptile shows, a 1:00 a.m. paintball attack on the front door, and prepping The Boy for his Kindergarten launch, all while dealing with my mother.

And the Crocodile Hunter died. That just sucks.

So, because all of that is just too much to type out in the time allotted to me before I have to leave work to stop my mom from stalking The Boy as he makes his way to the YMCA after school program--seriously, she's gonna launch a stakeout on the bus line--I'll leave you with a few things I learned this weekend:

1. Don't trust a man with no fingers on his left hand when he says a particular snake won't hurt you. Those fingers didn't just up and walk off on their own, if you know what I mean.

2. Cost of treating a bite from a copperhead? $1,000, and you may not even need anti-venom. Cost of treating a bite from a cottonmouth? $24,000 and 24 vials of anti-venom. And the guy who told me this still had all his fingers, even the ones that the aforementioned snakes bit, so I figured he knew the deal.

3. There are basically two kinds of people at reptile and exotic animal shows: middle-class soccer moms with little boys who love snakes and overly tattooed goth/biker types. This makes for an intriguing mixer situation.

4. You have to poke a hissing cockroach pretty dang hard before it'll hiss at you.

5. Legless lizards are kinda ooky looking.

6. Zebras are very gentle when you feed them, unlike goats. I hate goats.

So that was a lot of fun, though Hublet still won't let me buy a corn snake. More tomorrow.

I Hate Toys R Us

I do. And yesterday's lunchtime foray only reinforced this attitude.

See, The Boy will turn 5 tomorrow. We had the birthday party/family gathering thing last Saturday, but he'll receive his mom and dad gifts on the actual day of his birth. And all was well, except for the fact that I had yet to procure any Moon Sand, the miraculous re-usable sandlike product that has mesmerized The Boy, and that I'm sure he will spend exactly 2 minutes playing with before consigning it to the scrapheap of "huh, that's not quite what I expected."

But that's neither here nor there. The Boy had asked for exactly two items for his birthday--a Power Cranky and Moon Sand--and by God, he was gonna get a Power Cranky and some Moon Sand. Dammit.

Mom had given him the Power Cranky, and Hublet and I had gotten him a new bike, which just left the Moon Sand. I didn't want to order the $30 TV version of the product, because again, he will probably only play with this stuff for 5 minutes, so I hit the Internets to see if I could find a place to buy a smaller amount of the sand.

After visiting about 430 sites which said that yes, they carried Moon Sand, but that they were currently out of it until next February because of the high demand, I found myself hitting the Toys R Us site, where lo and behold, they claimed to carry Moon Sand. Since I didn't want to pay for rush shipping, I realized with a fair amount of dread that I would have to go to the actual store.

And so I girded my loins and headed to the local Toys R Us, where I proceeded to spend 15 minutes wandering around trying to find a person who could direct me to the Moon Sand, then another 5 minutes trying to explain to the employee what Moon Sand was, then another 5 minutes just WALKING from one part of the store to the other, then another 10 minutes scrutinizing the shelves I had been directed to for the Moon Sand, and then, after giving up, noticing the product on the shelves I was passing on my way out of the store. I had forgotten the cardinal rule of the Toys R Us--you are ALWAYS better off wandering aimlessly through the store than asking for help.

So, yay! Moon Sand! Now I just had to PAY for it. Oh, dear God. There were two lines open, during lunchtime, at a busy Toys R Us. One line was also the Customer Service line, so that was out, because nothing takes longer at Toys R Us than customer service. So I went to the second line, where I was "helped" by a girl who was either a) coming down off of a prolonged meth binge, or b) in the middle of said binge. Seriously. She greeted me with, "It's so HOT in here!" tried to scan the barcode on my Moon Sand with a stapler before she figured it out, and then entered the amount of cash tendered before her brain caught up with her fingers, which led to a very disjointed exchange about cost and change, followed by crazed giggling. Then she put the sand in a bag. Sort of. Actually she put it near the bag, on top of the bag, and then kind of wrapped the bag around it, because clearly OPENING the bag was proving too much for her limited motor skills, at which point I just snatched the bag, the sand, and the receipt and fled the store.

I wish I could say that this Toys R Us experience was atypical for me, but alas, it really wasn't.

And this Moon Sand had better live up to the hype. I'm just sayin'.

Fun With Visitor Logs

To the person who found my blog by Googling

"Skanky girl in a cocktail dress crapping on a flight of stairs,"

I can only say "WTF?" Followed by, "DUDE! Get a hobby that involves fresh air and sunshine."

No, I have nothing further to say on that subject. But the above is a heck of a lot funnier than this article, in which feminists who dare to point out that Islam isn't exactly the most female-friendly religion in the world are demonized and called crazy by their fellow feminists.

Because they would rather support gender abusers than be seen as agreeing with the "wrong" political party.

Some days, the stupid? It overflows. And the supply seems endless.

They Keep Sudafed Behind the Counter for a Reason

Woah. The extra-strength sudafed cold and sinus? Kicking my ass. So since I'm finding it difficult to focus sufficiently to post anything that requires even the tiniest bit of thought or motor control, I will instead share with you the odd thing I saw this morning on the way to work.

As I neared the penultimate intersection to my work, I noticed a man standing in the median, preparing to cross the street. He was wearing work boots, jean shorts, a white wife-beater t-shirt, and a gun and holster. That's it. No uniform, no other accessories of any kind.

The theme from Fistful of Dollars started playing in my head, and I imagined him sauntering into the Breugger's Bagels, fixing the women behind the counter with a flinty-eyed stare and daring them to scrimp on his cream cheese.

I mean, seriously dude. Raleigh has some questionable areas, but the Mission Valley shopping center at 8:00 a.m. is just not one of them.

I could write the whole thing off as a sudafed-induced hallucination, but I hadn't yet taken my morning pill.

My Rules for Successful Sci-Fi/Fantasy TV

I've forgotten how much I enjoyed watching Farscape when it was on. I finally broke down and got the first season (purchased, not netflixed), and I've been watching an episode a night, and wondering how I'll swing buying season 2 in the near future. Perhaps an addition to my birthday gift from Hublet? My needs are few, and consist primarily of sci-fi and fantasy/horror tv show dvds.

Which brings me to my point. I've watched a lot of sci-fi over the years--one of my earliest memories was of telling my mother that when I grew up I wanted to be Lt. Uhura because she got to wear a red miniskirt and a cool earpiece and fly through space--and I've figured out that most good sci-fi shows are really only good for the first 3 years, and then the writers/creators start falling into traps like:

1. Redeeming the villain, because he was popular, and a bunch of teenagers want him to get together with the main character (Spike from Buffy, I am SO looking at you).

2. Writing themselves into a corner in terms of the Big Story Arc because they weren't really clear on how the big mystery would be solved in the fist place, leading to wacky plot-lines, no payoff for the audience and character decimation/assassination (cough, X-Files, cough, Lost).

3. Running out of ideas, because no one had thought anything through when they pitched the series--for example, the high schoolers have to graduate sometime, and then what--and the series creator has moved on to something else (Voyager, and again with the Buffy).

Of course there are exceptions, but after a while you get tired of being on pins and needles wondering when the show you thought was really cool in the first season was going to start going downhill.

So in my world, the perfect sci-fi/fantasy show would run three years, during which time the larger arc would be brought to conclusion (plotted out completely before the show is even pitched, let alone made), and within which you could have things like consistent character development, room for fun standalone episodes, and an audience who KNOWS that there will be a payoff at a definite time. Sort of like the original Star Wars trilogy, but without the stupid Ewoks. Babylon 5 did this, although they had a 5-year plan, and it worked out pretty well for them.

Then, if audiences were just DYING to find out what happened later, you could do a follow-up movie, a la Farscape or Firefly.

Yeah, I'm a dreamer, and also not worried about generating cashflow for a network or being an out-of-work actor.

It Was Inevitable

As I draw close to the fourth anniversary of this blog--I, too, am amazed that I've been rambling on for this long without at least a movie deal!--I am pleased to announce that Hublet, always the cutting edge guy, has finally given in to the siren song of blogging and started his own little enterprise. I'm so proud.

You can find The Whining Schoolboy here. As you may imagine, Hublet will be blogging on the travails of teaching high school in a rural county. And the travails, they are many and varied indeed.

Please drop by and leave him a comment, if you can.

In other news, I've gotten rid of the ginormous monthly archive listing. They don't have a yearly archive option pre-made in MT, I don't feel like creating one, and all of my entries are categorized because I'm an uptight Virgo like that, so there you go.

Next I will probably hand-code my list of links, mainly because I can't remember my blogrolling password and haven't updated my links in like, forever.

Of Boogie Boards and Rogue Grits

I have returned from the beach to discover that I have over 5,000 emails in my inbox. What are these emails? A whole bunch of undeliverable bounces, looks like, which is odd, since I haven't sent anyone anything. So I am deleting everything in my inbox. If you emailed me in the past week, I'm not ignoring you on purpose. Just resend it.

The beach was a fine, relaxing experience, except for the fact that I nearly succumbed to an attack by a rogue grit.

See, I like grits. I like them with cheese and salt and pepper. So I awoke on the first full day of our beach stay and started to prepare the grits like I always do, in the microwave. Then my mother said, "Hey! Those look good! Make us all some!" which meant that I had to cook the grits on the stove.

No problem, except for the part where I've become unused to cooking grits on the stove, which meant that I had the heat up too high, which meant that the grits thickened too fast, which meant that a giant glob of thickened grits exploded out of the pot and landed on the middle finger of my right hand, directly below my fingernail.

A little known fact about hot grits, for you yankee types in the audience--they stick. They stick like lumpy white blobs of tar. So when a boiling hot grit lump lands on your flesh, it adheses to your skin like superglue. By the time the pain registers and you attempt to dislodge the grit glob, the damage has been done. And so it was with my finger.

After soaking the affected digit in ice water for half an hour, I had developed a large blister on my finger. Well, I figured, no biggie. I could play in the ocean (which is nice, cool, water) with a blister. So I did. And that worked out okay until The Boy put a death grip on my hand while wave jumping that not only popped the blister, but ripped the skin right off of the burn. That hurt, by the way, and I deserve some sort of mom medal for not unleashing the expletives the incident required.

So, ow. But okay, I thought, this is salt water, so it should stay nice and disinfected. Not so much. By the third day my finger was all swollen and purple and it hurt.

There were band-aids and antibiotic salves and precious beach time spent wondering whether I'd be able to enjoy the whole vacation before gangrene set in, but mercifully, the wound cleared up just in time for me to rip the scab off in an unfortunate packing incident. That hurt too, but I am finally on the mend and expect the scarring to be minor.

I am firmly convinced that had the south properly utilized the evil power of hot grits, Sherman never would have been able to burn Atlanta.

And I will be nuking my grits from now on.

Vacation!

Off to the beach for a week, where I will have zero access to computers, email or the time-sucking black hole that is the internet.

I might survive.

To Ponder

My vacation starts next week, and between trying to get caught up at work and complete all the little pre-beach to-dos, I've got nuthin'.

This, however, is perhaps the stupidest, most exploitative excuse for a film ever. And also, what she said.

And now, Deep Thoughts, via The Boy:

"Mommy, what would happen if our behinds were in the front of us?"

"Mommy, what would happen if I put a giraffe in a box?"

Enjoy your Monday.

The March

Finished reading Doctorow's latest last night, and I've really only got some half-formed impressions--well, beyond still being irritated at the lack of proper punctuation, because I am totally uptight about stuff like that--has anyone else out there read it?

I'm most intrigued by the relationship between Arly and Wrede Sartorius, even though the characters never interact--the tension between science and fate or science and religion. Neither character ends particularly well, in my opinion.

Gah. It's times like this I would actually enjoy being in a book club, although the rest of the time I would probably hate it with a fiery, passionate hate.

Not Today

I have a bunch of stuff to share with you guys, including but not limited to The Boy's swim lessons, my reading of Doctorow's The March and mounting irritation with his refusal to use quotation marks, his annoying tendency to shift point of view in the middle of a paragraph apparently just because he can, and the character Pearl, her connections to Hawthorne's character by the same name, and what he's going to do with this--I fear it can be nothing good.

However, I won't share that stuff today, because I'm too sad.

An acquaintance from church is having a c-section today, and a funeral for her newborn daughter this weekend. I can't get past the fact that she had to plan both of them simultaneously, since she's known for some time what the outcome of this pregnancy would be. I don't think I would be as strong as she is, were I in her situation.

Train Riding

Back from a weekend of riding the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad from Bryson City to the Nantahala Outdoor Center and back. And fyi, there were Crocs-a-plenty wading in the 45 degree water that flowed down the mountain.

The Boy shows no signs of outgrowing his love of trains. We will hopefully purchase a larger home in the next year or so, and I am already mentally setting aside a room for the tables and fake terrain of the truly train-obsessed.

Saw Superman Returns, and found the Christ imagery positively anvil-licious; folks, the mark of a good metaphor is that it kind of soaks into your consciousness, it doesn't come blaring onto the scene with a billboard and trumpets and then whack you upside the head with said billboard every five minutes. Geez. And did Brandon Routh speak more than 16 words during the entire movie? If he did, I must have fallen asleep. Everything else was sorta "eh," and Kate Bosworth is the blandest Lois Lane ever to blandly be imperiled. Blandly.

The High Life

I must say, our little Fourth of July celebration here in upper redneckia is getting to be quite the high-falutin' affair, and I love it.

The day begins with a pancake breakfast at the local church (which we never get up early enough to attend). The breakfast ends at 9:00, and folks start lining the parade route. People drag wagons filled with water and lemonade along the street as the route fills, and then the parade proper starts at 10:00--frankly, I think an argument could be made for starting at 9:00, because it is FREAKING HOT in eastern NC in July, but anyway...

The parade has gotten much longer now, and we've added beauty pageant winners and the animal shelter (complete with festively bedecked canines) to the usual participants--the bag piper who leads the parade, local merchants, boy scouts, a random congressman and other elected officials, the high school marching band, fire trucks and classic cars. Plus, they all throw candy at the crowd, and the children darting into the highway in pursuit of jolly ranchers adds a certain unpredictability to the whole thing.

After the parade, everyone heads over to the old school where booths and a stage are set up. This year there were inflatables for the kids to climb/jump on/run through, and no one monitoring them. Can you say "free for all?" We could. The Boy got to see his buddy The Girl Next Door, and she proceeded to drag him all over the place while the adults sipped fresh squeezed lemonade and tried not to lose track of them.

Then we came home and there was much hilarity on the slip n' slide, followed by a nap.

The day was rounded out with hotdogs and margaritas, and then we indulged in the ultimate in redneck firework viewing: sitting in plastic chairs at the end of the driveway and ooh-ing and aah-ing at the town-sponsored show, and then at the neighbor a few doors down who had obviously acquired a bunch of South Carolina (illegal in NC, in other words) REAL fireworks. It was actually a nice show.

I do love the Fourth.

Happy Fourth

Our Fourth of July checklist has officially been completed:

1. Flags prepped and ready for display - check.

2. Huge swaths of grass in backyard flattened and killed by constant use of SpongeBob themed slip n' slide - check

3. Boy bruised and abraded by overuse of aforementioned slip n' slide - check. Incidentally, has anyone out there been able to find a Bounce n' Slide from the folks at slip n' slide? I see them advertised, but cannot find one anywhere, and I think the cushioning would come in handy, if The Boy's ribcage is any indication...

4. California rednecks across the street shooting off $400 of fireworks at 10:30 p.m. directly in front of The Boy's bedroom window - check.

5. $13 blender and assorted margarita fixin's ready to go - check.

6. TIVO set to record the D.C. fireworks display in lieu of the Boston Pops travesty - check.

I think we're good to go! Have a happy fourth, y'all!

Blame Netflix

I tend to be pretty forgiving when it comes to pop culture and my consumption of it--I had no problem with muppets in hoverchairs while Farscape was on, and I am currently watching Solitary, for crying out loud.

But lately, my patience with cinema is definitely on the wane, and I blame Netflix.

Back in high school, when the only thing that my friends and I were really able to do for entertainment was watch movies, we made our slow and torturous way through all the offerings at the local video store, even such gems as Virgin Among the Living Dead (featuring papier mache'-headed "Scottish" zombies with names like Guiseppe wandering through groves of olive trees) and The Stuff. No matter how awful these flicks were, we never dreamed of turning them off, because that would mean we had wasted a trip to the video store! Plus, I just had to know how the travesty would end!

Alas, those days are long gone, and I no longer have any qualms about yanking a movie out of the DVD player half-watched and sealing it back into its self-mailer with a disgusted flourish.

Case in point: A History of Violence, which isn't a long movie to begin with, was yanked and sealed about 50 minutes in. Its pacing from the first scene bothered me, because it went beyond the whole "visual metaphor for the slow pace of small-town life that can be suddenly shattered by violence" and straight into "I am David Cronenberg and I am really cool and I am making these actors do everything REALLY SLOWLY so that you the viewer will stop and think, 'wow, that David Cronenberg sure is cool with his existential use of SLOW ACTING AND SHIT!'"

So I was annoyed 5 minutes in, but figured "okay, let's at least get to the plot." And then we did, and it was cliche' after cliche' interspersed with soft talking and slow acting and tacky oral sex and by the time the main character was done with his front yard carnage and his blood-spattered teen was standing there looking shell-shocked Hublet and I looked at each other and went, "We're done," and we never looked back.

Before Netflix, I would have suffered through the second half of the movie because I would have felt the strange need to get my money's worth from the video store visit and selection. But Netflix has turned movie consumption into a never-ending stream of content, paid for out-of-sight with a monthly credit card charge, and so I no longer have any connection to the product that arrives in my mailbox.

I could get all hoity-toity here and say that Netflix has made me more discerning about the movies I will deign to watch, but that's not true. These movies are all flicks I wouldn't pay full price to see at the theatre, so I pretty much know what I'm getting. Really, Netflix has just made me more jaded and impatient with movies.

And we all know that jaded and impatient are probably not qualities I should be cultivating in greater degrees. But on the bright side, I think I'm finally cynical enough to pursue a career in movie reviewing!

Place Your Bets

Okay, so two characters will bite the big one in the final Potter book.

Seems like at least one Weasley will have to perish--there are too many of them and they're all involved in the war...

Friday, Time for an Embarrassing Confession

I watch "Solitary" on the reality tv channel.

And I like it.

That is all.

Speculation on whether this means the apocalypse is nigh may now commence.

No, Not Snakes on a Plane

Even better - Ants on a Keyboard!

My keyboard! Fire ants! Happy Freaking Monday!

So I did a bit of HULK SMASH! and waited for the facilities guy to arrive, which he did, toting a canister of some deadly chemical, which he proceeded to spray pretty much everywhere.

I asked him if there was anything dangerous about the chemical and he just said, "Eh, the smell'l go away in an hour or so--just don't put your bare feet in it until it's dry."

Well, fabulous. So here I sit in a drying puddle of something that is deadly to fire ants, scrupulously keeping my feet in my kicky summer slides and trying not to breathe while I watch the few remaining fire ants on my desk shrivel up and die.

But I'm not worried. Lightheaded and maybe a little itchy--and my lips feel strangely numb, but I'm not worried.

How's your Monday going?

A Week's Worth of Crap

In a day's worth of post.

First off, would the owner of the car with this personalized license plate:

ACCIFSU

Please explain to me what the hell that means? Personalized plates are goofy enough without also being completely unintelligible to everyone else. I thought the POINT of the personalized plate was to let the world know something important about you--you know, that your family has 3 automobiles, of which this is #2, or that your car is really fast (C-Ya) or that you're wacky or crazy or ditzy or you like NASCAR or whatever--but now I find that more and more I'm coming across people whose plates necessitate the owner's personal Rosetta stone to decipher, and as someone with more than a touch of OCD, this drives me nuts.

On a related note, what is up with the stick figure family representation decals on the backs of vehicles? Seriously, do you WANT the pedophiles on the road to know that you have preschool-aged twin boys, and that all they have to do to get a crack at them is follow you home? I'm sure you love your family, but TMI.

Watched Al-Zarqawi's hideout get blown up, and I just want to know how, exactly, there was enough of anything left to identify after the blast, much less that he survived for a few minutes afterward.

Going to see Cars this weekend. The Boy's excitement knows no bounds--he has been wearing his Tow-Mater t-shirt every day this week, and I am trying to ignore the fact that the character is voiced by Larry the Cable Guy, who irritates the snot out of me, AND that the lead car, Lightning McQueen, is voiced by Owen Wilson, who ALSO irritates the snot out of me. But I have developed a seething hatred for anyone involved in the Wedding Crashers, so there you go--Vince Vaughan, I am looking at you, one-note schtick boy. Fast patter gets really old really quickly. Really.

Reading the Oxford American's summer fiction issue. Why is it that in modern stories even when things happen it seems like nothing is happening? At least with southern writing you get a lot of pointless random violence to spice things up, but really, this magnifying-glass approach to character studies just grates on my nerves. There's no "there" there, beyond the fact that the author is using painstakingly lyrical language to describe character thoughts, and the language itself takes you right out of the story, because all you can think is, "Wow, it took him a while to come up with that metaphor, I'll bet," which seems to be all the author is aiming for now: a pat on the back for "original construction and imagery" while the characters and plot languish on the page.
Lately, unless it's genre fiction, I don't read it.

So there's my daily brain dump. Oh, and what she said. The thing that annoys me about the Dixie Chicks brou-ha-ha is that it was OVER THREE YEARS AGO! So if you're bringing it up now, the cynic in me believes that it's because you're trying to cash in, and I put you right on "ignore." Plus I am apparently not cool enough to be their fan any longer, so I guess it all works out in the end.

Big Ball of Snot

I am a big ball of snot. Our entire "Hey, the kid's with the grandparents, let's party!" week was taken up with a stomach virus that segued beautifully into a sinus infection. At least the decongestant has some good side effects--I'm very alert and disinclined to eat.

And the comments are back, so that's a happy thing. One day I will convert to WordPress--I've downloaded the zip file and read the 5 minute install instructions and everything--but today will not be that day. So I soldier bravely on with MoveableType.

All of this to say that until the snot trauma subsides, posting will most likely be sporadic and probably a little difficult to read when it does occur: the decongestant keeps me awake, alert and hyper, but the synapses it stimulates tend to fire randomly, making logic difficult.

In the meantime, for your viewing pleasure, the scariest footwear I have ever seen. Ever. And that includes those platform shoes with the goldfish swimming around in them that Huggy Bear wore in I'm Gonna Get You, Sucka.

No Fun League

So, my Memorial Day weekend, so bright and shiny and full of possibilities (The Boy is at the grandparents'), was spent lying on the sofa and trying not to puke.

The comments, they are still broken.

My stomach, it is still unsettled. Thus the appalling lack of witty. Or anything else.

One bright spot - Washington the Warrior on the History Channel. We're talking classic History Channel production, people! Reenactors writhing in pretend agony! Wooden character actors staring woodenly into the camera! And random slow-motion to convey Dramatic Tension! God, I love the History Channel's Documentary on a Budget stuff.

Raid - A panacea for our times

When it comes to killing black widow spiders, I am not picky. I have been known to drown them with a garden hose, whack them with Hublet's size 13 lawn-mowing shoes, and spray them with whatever I can get my hands on that I think may be even remotely poisonous. And I do this more often than you might think, as the spiders really enjoy hanging out underneath the siding of our house.

So I know that a can of Raid can be a girl's best friend. I've used the following flavors of Raid in my black-widow killing projects: Raid for flying insects (the death to evil wasps flavor), Raid for ants and cockroaches, and once what I thought was generic Raid but turned out to be WD-40--it was dark, I was freaking out, I grabbed a can and let fly and I think it worked...the spider was definitely MIA the next day.

Anyway, hurrah for Raid! Because in addition to being airborne death to black widow spiders, it is also a damn fine way to deal with a cheating spouse!

Favorite quote, from doughty police Captain Marty Bruce:
"She came in and caught her husband with another woman and she grabbed a can of Raid and went at it."

Yeah, don't mess with an angry woman with a can of Raid in her hands. I've got the pile of dead spiders to prove it.

No surprise here

Shamelessly stolen from Andrea. But I'm not apologizing--hell no! I don't have to apologize! I'm a smartass!

Smartass You are 85% Rational, 57% Extroverted, 85% Brutal, and 85% Arrogant.

You are the Smartass! You are rational, extroverted, brutal, and arrogant. In fact, you could very well be the anti-Christ, as you are almost the exact opposite of everything Jesus was supposed to be. While Jesus says love your enemy, you say love beating the crap out of your enemy. While Jesus raises the dead, you raise hell. While Jesus walks on water, you tend to sink. You probably consider people who are emotional and gentle to be big pussies who are obviously in lesser stature than you. You have many flaws, despite your seeming intelligence and cool-headedness. For instance, you aren't very nice. In fact, you're probably an asshole. And you are conceited and self-centered. Not only that, but you are very loud and vocal about all this, seeing as how you are extroverted. There is no better way to describe you than as a "smartass", I'm afraid. Perhaps just "ass" would do, too. But that's a little less literary and descriptive. At any rate, your main personality defect is the fact that you are self-centered, mean, uncaring, and brutally logical. To put it less negatively: 1. You are more RATIONAL than intuitive. 2. You are more EXTROVERTED than introverted. 3. You are more BRUTAL than gentle. 4. You are more ARROGANT than humble. Compatibility: Your exact opposite is the Emo Kid. Other personalities you would probably get along with are the Capitalist Pig, the Braggart, and the Sociopath. * * If you scored near fifty percent for a certain trait (42%-58%), you could very well go either way. For example, someone with 42% Extroversion is slightly leaning towards being an introvert, but is close enough to being an extrovert to be classified that way as well. Below is a list of the other personality types so that you can determine which other possible categories you may fill if you scored near fifty percent for certain traits. The other personality types: The Emo Kid: Intuitive, Introverted, Gentle, Humble. The Starving Artist: Intuitive, Introverted, Gentle, Arrogant. The Bitch-Slap: Intuitive, Introverted, Brutal, Humble. The Brute: Intuitive, Introverted, Brutal, Arrogant. The Hippie: Intuitive, Extroverted, Gentle, Humble. The Televangelist: Intuitive, Extroverted, Gentle, Arrogant. The Schoolyard Bully: Intuitive, Extroverted, Brutal, Humble. The Class Clown: Intuitive, Extroverted, Brutal, Arrogant. The Robot: Rational, Introverted, Gentle, Humble. The Haughty Intellectual: Rational, Introverted, Gentle, Arrogant. The Spiteful Loner: Rational, Introverted, Brutal, Humble. The Sociopath: Rational, Introverted, Brutal, Arrogant. The Hand-Raiser: Rational, Extroverted, Gentle, Humble. The Braggart: Rational, Extroverted, Gentle, Arrogant. The Capitalist Pig: Rational, Extroverted, Brutal, Humble. The Smartass: Rational, Extroverted, Brutal, Arrogant. Be sure to take my Sublime Philosophical Crap Test if you are interested in taking a slightly more intellectual test that has just as many insane ramblings as this one does!

Things That Will Never Stop Being Funny

Number one in a series:

The Tick's battle cry: "SPOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNN!"

It doesn't matter that it's been almost a decade since that cartoon was on. Whenever I catch it in reruns, I will always laugh out loud at SPOOOOOOOOONNN!

I'm also partial to, "Roof pig! Most unexpected!"

Yeah, it's sunny and 75 degrees today and I'm not that interested in writing about methane gas or tech-savvy librarians. Can you tell?

Mary Queen of Scots Does Dateline

Or something like that.

Caught a few moments of a show on the History Channel last night called Historyonics, which manages to take the usual low-budget production values and poor acting of HC shows, mix in a dose of camp, toss it in a pop-culture blender and create something that made me question my level of sobriety.

Now, I understand the whole, "We have no budget, history is boring, everyone knows these things are cheesy, why not embrace the cheese" feeling that must be underlying this little visual stretch exercise, but I've gotta say that embracing the cheese when you're talking about the beheading of Mary Queen of Scots is just, well, I don't know what it is, but I'm fairly certain that one of the adjectives you could use to describe it is WRONG.

During the five minutes I saw, we had a soundtrack courtesy of Queen--"Killer Queen" played in the background as Elizabeth I signed the death warrant, and "Under Pressure" was used underneath the Mary scenes--and then the supposedly deceased Mary walking and talking, 20/20 style with a modern interviewer, complaining in decidedly modern language about being framed.

Ah, all is revealed. This is a BBC production. Apparently they're bored with all their history and are trying to shake things up. Might I suggest that they go talk to Terry Jones, who managed a fun look at the Middle Ages without resorting to a pop music soundtrack and the cast of Blackadder?

Sigh. Yet more proof that I am tragically unhip to the "history simply can't be compelling without embellishments" jive. I miss my non-historically accurate portly reenactors and stilted dramatizations featuring dramatic pointing. Fogeydom, here I come.

Sojourn in the Land that Time Forgot

So we went to Asheville this past weekend. I learned some stuff.

1. If you want a sibling to help you out but you're too damn passive-aggressive/lazy/foolish to actually ASK for help, then you don't get to be pissy about the fact that your sibling didn't suddenly discover his psychic abilities and offer to help you out.

2. It only rains in North Carolina when we have to drive long distances. As soon as we arrive at our destination, the rain stops. So if any of you are still suffering drought conditions, I will happily drive to your town and then circle it for hours--for a fee.

3. I cannot eat more than two meals in a row in restaurants before the sodium turns me into an angrier, hairier version of the Sta-Puft Marshmallow Man.

On a brighter side, we went to see Thank You for Smoking, which was hilarious. And we had the added fun of seeing it in downtown Asheville, which is quite the bobo and boho mecca. It is also The Land of The Aged Hippie. Seriously. I got sandwiched between a barefoot fellow who looked like Father Christmas by way of Haight Ashbury and David Crosby's stylist and a group of three hemp and sandal clad Social Security beneficiaries while I was waiting in line for a beer.

Naturally, they were all debating whether or not to go see Why We Fight, which led into a segue about whether or not they could vote for Eisenhour, which, okay, were they even old enough to vote back then and anyway isn't the point moot, but whatever, which then led to a discussion of organic produce and the environmental impact of whateverthehell on whateverthehellelse and all I could think was, "Help me! I am trapped in the vortex where Crunchy Cons and Flower Children meet and I may die of either the patchouli fumes or the stereotypes! Ack!"

And I was left with the cold feeling of sick dread in my stomach, wondering whether I too will ossify and get stuck in a random decade forty years in my past, convinced that trying to stay exactly the way I was when I was in my twenties is the only thing worth doing.

But then I drank my beer and got over it. Mostly. Except for the barefoot Father Christmas guy. Dude - you're BAREFOOT. In PUBLIC. That is a level of gross I simply cannot overcome.

Irony and Eternal Damnation

I don't serve on committees for a reason. The main reason is that they tend to bring out my inner ENTJ, which in turn triggers my impatience meter, which culminates in my utter hatred for everyone and everything involved with the committee in question. So I avoid committees like the plague.

And yet I keep getting appointed to them, particularly at church, because we have some byzantine system whereby you innocently volunteer to teach a Sunday school class one year and then suddenly you're in charge of the preschool, on the administrative board, the education committe AND you have to figure out a strategy for implementing the "no molesting kids on church premises" policy. I'm not sure how I missed the explanation where I was told that chasing two year olds around the assembly hall for an hour each week meant I was signing my life away, but Hublet does accuse me of ignoring what I don't find interesting, so I'm sure it's my fault.

So anyway, I duly trudged off to my committee meeting this week, because as one of the few people on the committee who isn't a paid church employee, I'm the only person who can take meeting minutes. And I don't mind--at least I'm forced to pay attention, and so am less likely to inadvertently volunteer to patch the chapel roof or something if my mind wanders.

Now, I am not Donald Trump, but I am a pretty busy person and my days, they are very long. Because our church is in town, when I have a meeting I just meet Hublet at a nearby Chick-Fil-A and drop Boy with him so I don't have to drive all the way home and all the way back. This means that by the time the meeting starts at 7:00 p.m. I have been either at work or driving since 6:45 a.m., and am thus not in the mood to split hairs, dilly dally, make small talk, or do anything much beyond taking notes and then votes, in that order.

Which is usually fine, because our committee chair is a military man and he's all about the punctuality. Except for this past week, when people who hadn't been to any of the meetings so far showed up, forcing a 45 minute recap of everything--with some arguing added in for fun--that had been done up to that point.

So we got to the business of the meeting at 7:45. And then the real hair splitting began, and the arguing, and the confrontation--all over the wording of a freaking application form, mind you--and we managed to touch on homosexuality in middle schools, the definition of a minor, and whether or not you spank your children before I finally snapped and said, "The point is that no one should be boinking anyone on a church trip! Can we just finish what we're here to do?"

I didn't think retirees blushed. I also don't think that I'm like many people on that committee, and I'm pretty convinced that they all think I'm violently deranged and possibly a pervert. Oh well. You win some, you lose some.

My point? Beyond hating committees? Beyond the fact that if you're asking for my time you should try to be respectful of it? My point is that I have finally figured out why folks who say, "Oh, I can totally be religious without going to church" are full of crap. If you don't go to church, you don't have to deal with other members of your religion. And your faith will never truly be tested until you are locked in a room for two hours with people arguing over the proper use of the word "minor."

It's ironic that for someone like me church committee membership is probably the quickest route to hell.

Update

Yesterday work was pretty wacky; however, my small entryway table from home will be featured on an upcoming episode of Nova, so I guess that's a win.

Conversation with The Boy from our long, rainy trip home, and proof that intellectual stimulation is not what it used to be:

"Mommy, how come Spongebob Squarepants is a giant piece of cheese?"

"He's not, son. He's a sponge."

"No, his name is Spongebob. He's a piece of cheese."

"No, he's a sponge. A sponge is an animal that lives in the ocean. Spongebob is just a Sponge named, I guess, Bob."

"Sponges are animals in the ocean? What do they do?"

"They hang out and eat stuff, I guess."

"But why is he a spongebob?"

"He's not a spongebob, he's a sponge. His name is Spongebob. His name could be SpongeLarry or SpongeFred, he'd still be a sponge."

"SPONGE LARRY?!?!? That's just silly, mommy."

Just finished reading Manhunt: the 12-day Chase for Lincoln's Killer. My word, that prose is purple. VERY purple. The history is good, the book seems well-researched (and how sad is it that after reading history I want to go research it myself to be sure that no one's pulled a Bellesiles on me), but dear GOD! Some of the passages made me want to beat my head against a wall.

Watched Junebug on the recommendation of a friend who shall remain nameless because I am going to kill him. Talk to Hublet, friend--he was most amused at my reaction. Next time, why don't you just tell me to rent Old Yeller, Charlotte's Web and King Kong in rapid succession, mix it in with Fried Green Tomatoes and Doing Time on Maple Drive and then have a handful of quaaludes with a scotch chaser? Geez. Yeah, yeah, themes were artfully explored, it was fun to see Pilot Mountain, eccentric southern characters were colorfully eccentric, and the chick who was nominated for an Oscar deserved the nod. But still. Bambi and luudes, man. Bambi and luudes.

Perhaps that wasn't the best movie to watch immediately after The 40-Year Old Virgin.....

Passages from my fabulous new book

Because I was so inspired by the inspirationally inspirational story of Kaavya Viswanathan--and her $500,000 advance--I have finally done it! I have written a book! Wanna read some sample passages?

Okay, how's this opening grab ya?

"It's a universal truth that what rich guys really want is a wife."

Great stuff, huh? Whaddya mean it sounds familiar? Oh, oh, sorry. Yeah, that's one of my favorite books--I've read it so many times that I must have internalized that passage. Sorry! Hmm. Let me try again...

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times--oh, wait. Bad example. Wow! Must've internalized more than I thought!

Okay, last one.

In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. No, wait, that has a familiar ring to it, too.

Um, how about "It was a dark and stormy night?" No?

"Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn?" Drat!

This writing stuff is hard! No wonder she copied--um, I mean "internalized."

See? This is Why I Will Never Be A Teen Heartthrob

Or Heartthrob-ette, or whatever.

I just never got the hang of posing with the " big Disney furry people." Heck, I didn't even know that Disney held a convention for Furries every year. Heh.

Seriously, that's the funniest article I've read in a while. And it brings back uncomfortable memories of young teeny bopper angst over Simon Le Bon and Adam Ant. Gah.

Fortunately, I have matured and moved on. I no longer have foolish crushes on celebrities. Nope. Not at all.

Wacky Editorial Scoring Sheet, and Shallow Tuesday Schadenfreude

Hey, for all of you folks out there who are tired of reading the same old comparisons in the editorial pages: Bush = Hitler, Iraq = Vietnam, I am pleased to report that today's USA Today offers something refreshingly new!

Bush = Torquemada

Bravo, historians! Just when I thought you had succumbed to a collective creative stupor, you bust out with the Spanish Inquisition. Well played, slightly hysterical editorial contributor, well played indeed. Although I must ask myself if your intent was to force me to relive Monty Python sketches in my head for the remainder of the day, because that's really the only impact your piece had on me...

Perhaps we should develop a points system so that we can determine whether an article is worth reading without wasting our time actually reading the whole thing. For instance, if you scan an editorial and see the words Hitler or Vietnam in a piece about Iraq, you can probably rest assured that you've been there and done that. Join me, fellow readers and writers, in fighting the good fight against stale, hackneyed editorials!

I've compiled a brief list of folks that all you burgeoning editorialists can use in place of Hitler, so you don't have to try and be original! Aren't I just the sweetest thing?

Here goes: Ghengis Khan, Rasputin, Vlad the Impaler, Stalin, Chairman Mao, Attilla the Hun, William the Conqueror, Suleyman the Magnificent, Hirohito, Mussolini, and Nero.

There, that ought to get you started.

And now, to the shallow. I'm loving the mockery of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes that's occuring post-"Oh look! She text-messaged me during my interview and it Wasn't At All Staged Because We Are Truly in Love" Diane Sawyer interview:

Here's a good one.

Defamer always makes me laugh.

And let's not forget David Spade, who stated on his Showbiz Show that Katie will be allowed to speak during the Scientology silent birth, as long as she doesn't utter any "forbidden phrases," such as: "I want to see my family," or "Why is that door locked?"

Hee!

Petty Grievances

So I know you've all been dying to ask, "Hey, BAW! What's annoying you today?"

1. Swimming portions of video games. Pointless, time-wasting and stupid. I'm looking at you, Lara Croft. And at you, God of War. Seriously. I understand, okay? Hold down the R1 button to charge the dash, then frantically jam the left controller forward and hit square and hope that Kratos doesn't get squished by the random mobile underwater wall. Boring and irritating, and it gives me thumb cramps. Plus, you can't kill anything while you're swimming. Can't I just solve a logic puzzle and then kill stuff? I mean, hello? The game is called God of WAR, not Aquaman!

2. Baby bunnies. Yes, I hate baby bunnies. Do you know why? Because they're stupid, and slow, and their tiny stupid slow corpses are littering our yard, because our cat is neither stupid nor slow. So we either keep the cat locked in the guestroom and listen to her yowling to go out and get no sleep, or we let her out and carnage (and eventual de-worming) ensues. Stupid bunnies.

3. This isn't so much annoying as it is puzzling. See, names are important. They color people's perceptions of you, and some folks believe that they even mold your destiny, which is why The Boy isn't named Thor, or Gollum, or Poindexter. So why would you choose Moses as a name? Talk about baggage--the kid is either gonna end up lost in a desert or in south Alabama on a former plantation that's fallen on hard times, having inappropriate thoughts about his sister and struggling to deal with both his mentally handicapped younger brother and his own suicidal tendencies. Because the only Moses-es around these parts tend to be Faulknerian characters.

And so with that, I am off to do the Easter thing with family. Back Monday.

March Madness? Try April.

I realize this may come as news to a lot of you, but it turns out that our fine institution is in the market for a new basketball coach.

Now, I'm a bit of a Tobacco Road anomaly in that I don't pay much attention to college basketball. Actually I suppose that makes me more of a Tobacco Road apostate, but let's not split hairs. Anyhoo, Hublet, while not a rabid, foaming at the mouth obsessive, is, shall we say--interested--in the outcome of this search, so the last week has found me greeting the morning with the bedside clock radio, the TV news and the radio in the den (and the portable radio/cd player in the kitchen, you know, because walking that extra 4 feet to the den might result in his missing important coach search intel!) tuned to the Latest! Coach Search! Developments! Papal elections pale, PALE, I tell you, in comparison to this stuff.

But Hublet's transforming the house into a giant coaching news receiver is nothing compared to what's happening online. Fans on one of the big sites have spent their weekends (and presumably their workdays) obsessively searching for any tiny speck of information about who our next coach will be. And when I say obsessive, I mean that in the DSM-IV, OCD definition kind of way. Examples? Certainly!

Aside from the usual "insiders" posting rumors and wild speculation, some enterprising fans figured out how to use fltplan.com to track the movements of our big booster's plane, and so a large part of the weekend was spent discussing what a two-hour stopover in Memphis meant in terms of negotiations.

Then there was the whole "he's coming today to tour! no he isn't! yes he is!" discussion of yesterday that culminated in fans staking out the webcams and the actual parking lot of the RBC center and excitedly reporting that the Lights! Were! On! at 9 p.m. and there was No! Hockey! Game! OMGWTFBBQ!!!!! There were also reported sightings of a black Lincoln Navigator, which everyone KNOWS is the same car that our athletic director drives! I am amazed that no one ran a license plate check on it to confirm ownership, but I haven't checked those boards, so who knows? Maybe they did.

The most amusing part of all of this is the fact that the local news media are apparently monitoring this same message board, because their cameras are conveniently showing up at locations of interest shortly after they're posted online, and the on-camera sports guys are making sly references to their "sources" while pretty much quoting from the message board.

Actually, the truly amusing part is the fact that the fans on our message board keep expressing incredulity that the folks on the Possible Coach's Point of Origin Board are nowhere near as enterprising in figuring out what's going on.

Well, that could be because those people aren't completely batshit insane and verging on stalkerish, but who am I to judge?

Wow. Guess I Really Hated that Movie.

The good news - we have two fully functional toilets, hot water (not in the toilets) and a heat pump that actually, you know, puts out heat. Let the wackiness ensue!

The bad news - I need reading glasses, and Hublet and I watched The Wedding Crashers last night, which left me feeling rather homicidal. WHY was this movie popular? It wasn't just tasteless in that affected, "oh, we're such non-PC scamps" way, and it wasn't just predictable in the "boy meets girl under false pretenses, boy decides to come clean only to be superceded by girl's butthead boyfriend, boy wins girl at the end" way, it was also BORING. And badly written! Not even the creepily mesmeric effect of Owen Wilson's nose could keep my attention.

News flash, script folk! Giving your characters a distinctive "patter" does not translate into forcing them to recite self-congratulatory, profane, stream of consciousness soliloquies for Every Single Line They Utter, while the plot--what, there was a plot?--languishes pitifully forgotten in the corner. Creating characters who exist solely to make the writers look clever doesn't translate into interesting films. Or books. Or even party conversations. Here's a ladder, writers--get over yourselves.

And also, Will Farrell? Not that funny. So the scene with him? Could have easily been about a year and a half shorter. Ditto the crazy younger brother's scenes, Jane Seymour's boob scene, anything involving the fiance, the pasttimes of the wacky rich and powerful, and the endless montage of wild and crazy wedding crashing, replete with Implants A'Flappin'. And that's taking into consideration the fact that Hublet and I skimmed the second half of the movie on Fast Forward. Too long. Too, too long.

Wow, that's pretty much the whole movie, isn't it? They probably could have shortened this thing by an hour and a half with no problem. Come to think of it, wasn't this an episode of Three's Company?

I want my two hours back--and a written apology.

What a Week. Already.

Blogging has been rather sporadic of late, and I'm sorry. It seems a number of things have conspired to suck the life out of my blogging energy, including yet more daycare trauma, everything in the entire house breaking, and my recent purchase of God of War for the PS2, but it looks as though things are getting back on a more even keel--well, maybe. Take a glimpse into my recent past and judge for yourselves...

So The Boy had a new daycare situation, all happy with his buddies from the Place That Suddenly Went to Hell. Unfortunately, this situation has also deteriorated due to a combination of bureaucratic screw-ups and his teacher's medical problems. Let's just say there's been stress. After some scrambling, The Boy is hanging with a sitter at his best buddy's house, which means earlier mornings, later evenings and a higher gas bill, but it's only for two months, so I guess we'll live.

While that was going on, Hublet came home one day to relax and await our late arrival. Suddenly he heard the shower come on in the guest bathroom. Only it wasn't the shower--it was the toilet overflowing because the rod that holds the floater in the tank had corroded and broken. So. Water everywhere. Then we tried to fix the toilet only to discover that we have some freaky sized toilet for which we need Super Special Parts, and so tomorrow we have a plumber coming. Yay.

Oh, and did I mention our heat pump has recently given up the ghost? Yeah. They came out to replace that yesterday, which was great, except...

The new thermostat is smaller than the previous one, so my wallpaper in the hallway now looks decidedly bizarre. House Beautiful it isn't, folks. Plus we discovered that the builders had mislabeled the breakers, so the installers managed to turn off our hot water heater, which I didn't realize until...

I got up in the 49 degree weather this morning (no heat pump, remember?) and leapt into my nice, allegedly hot shower to warm up and ended up freezing my ass off. Fastest. Shower. Ever.

Now my scalp itches because I didn't rinse all the shampoo out in my rush to just FINISH THE SHOWER, I am chugging Pepto Bismol to prevent all the hot coffee I'm drinking from burning a hole in my stomach lining, we're hemorraging cash, AND did I mention I still need to do our taxes?

At least The Boy is having fun with the grandparents this week.

I'm just looking forward to June. Come on, June!

Things We do for Love

Example the first: sit through three hours of people singing in German in an uncomfortable seat with no leg room. You're welcome, Hublet. And now you may reciprocate by sitting through 95 minutes of Nathan Fillion killing slugs.

Random thought:

Dear Media -

I just thought I'd let you know...I'm fresh out of panic. Tapped right the heck out. I know this bums you out, because I'm not giving you the reaction you want to your latest overhyped, overblown freakout about the environment, or the government, or whatever, but I can't lie to you. If all the polar bears die from global warming and I get oceanfront property in Raleigh as a result, well, I'll just deal with it. Polar bears are mean anyway. Ditto if the sun burns out and we all freeze, or if Iran starts nuking the world, or whatever. I just cannot be bothered to panic. And if you don't start dialing down the OHMYGOD!!!!, I will be forced to dial my apathy-meter up to eleven.

How about this? If any of the aforementioned events actually occur, let me know. In the meantime, I need to paint my kitchen.

Love,
Big Arm Woman

Nowhere to go but up

If there was a way for me to get my daily horoscope broadcast over my clock radio when the alarm goes off, so that it's the first thing I hear in the morning, I'd be all over that. Mainly because I have a feeling that today's announcement would have been something along the lines of, "Beware small annoying crap!"

But alas, technology doesn't provide me with personalized horoscope announcements over the public airways, so I have to learn the hard way.

My day thus far:

• Dog sleeps on my foot. Wake up at 4 a.m. when dog moves and my foot "wakes up." Spend 10 minutes wriggling toes and grinding teeth against the pins and needles sensation.
• Never really get back to sleep until 5:30 a.m.
• Wake up again at 5:44 a.m. when Hublet has to let dog out. Sigh and close eyes.
• Open eyes again at 6:00 a.m. when alarm goes off.
• Stagger to shower; pour giant glob of shampoo directly into left eye.
• Hop around in a fog of pain and suds, cursing.
• Convince Boy to substitute blue jeans for sweatpants in his sartorial repertoire. Bargain. Plead. End up taking along a pair of sweatpants "for later." Realize that verbal sparring with 4 year old over attire has made us late.
• Prepare to leave. Fail to locate car keys.
• Flail for 15 minutes before remembering that I cleaned out the car yesterday and came into the house bearing trash to throw away.
• Remember haranguing Hublet to take out trash.
• Remember today is trash day.
• Run to curb, fling open can, start digging through coffee grounds, garlic peels, yogurt containers and assorted muck.
• Locate keys, which now smell of garlic.
• Wash hands vigorously.
• Arrive at work late with headache and lingering aroma of garlic clinging to my person.
• Brace self for remainder of day.

Daily Kerfuffle

I must admit that I am inappropriately fascinated by the whole Isaac Hayes South Park thing, even though I haven't watched the show in forever.

And now this?

A "religion" shouldn't necessitate handlers who never let practitioners out of their sight and libel suits to keep the press in line, you know?

Hooray for the internet--all your dirty little secrets (and wacked-out conspiracy theories, and hoaxes, and decent cookie recipes even if they didn't come from Nieman Marcus) exposed!

Hello Ambivalence, My old Friend

So. Received the Oxford American's fiction issue a few days ago, whereupon Hublet promptly handed it to me and said, "You read it and tell me if there's anything good," and then fled the scene.

Coward.

See, I have this problem with most of what passes for fiction nowadays--I hate it. Unless, oddly enough, it's genre fiction. I think it's because the folks writing genre fiction, with a few notable exceptions (hellooooo, Anne Rice), are aware that what they're supposed to do is tell a good story, not fight the power, stick it to the man, or change the freaking world with their navel-gazing purple prose of doom.

So when I'm confronted with the "fiction edition" of a magazine, I get this horrible feeling in my gut, as though I'm about to be dragged kicking and screaming through a wasteland of ennui punctuated with meaningless acts of drug abuse, sex, violence, and cussin', perhaps with a sprinkling of "God is dead" and "the abyss is staring back at me" for good measure.

But I have a higher tolerance for southern writing, mainly because the southern tradition of ennui is old and established and doesn't suffer the taint of metropolitan settings. Don't ask me why despair is easier to take in a bucolic setting, it just is. Plus, southern writing has always had a firm sense of the absurd. Manly Pointer stealing Hulga's leg in Good Country People is as hilarious as it is shocking and dark.

So I opened the OA to a random story and started reading. Boobs. Boob art as a metaphor for a failed relationship in--you guessed it--New York City. There was a whiff of trying too hard to be Gabriel Garcia Marquez mixed in with a touch of genuine southern humor, and a line in which the narrator wondered how exactly he and his girlfriend had become these rootless, ennui-filled, boring modern people. Good question. I think the answer is they spent too much time reading modern fiction editions of magazines.

I really hate the fact that I hate what passes for incisive, cutting edge fiction nowadays.

I think I'll blame James Joyce and go stare into the abyss--and then possibly write a self-involved story about genitalia as a metaphor for modern relationships.

I bet it would sell.

Let's Hear it for the Hublet!

Who won Teacher of the Year at his high school!

Yay, Hublet!

Of course, I am convinced that his win was entirely due to the Shakespeare Club and RSC field trip he took, but as maker of the publicity fliers for his Shakespeare Club meetings (sample: Hold on to your codpiece! It's the Shakespeare club!), I may be somewhat biased.

PSA

Dear Person In Line Ahead of Me at My Favorite Purveyor of Burritos the Size of My Head:

In case it's escaped your attention, we are in a restaurant. It is customary, when in an eating establishment such as this, to pay for the food at the time you place your order; hence the cash register in front of you at the ordering counter.

So is it too much to ask that you prepare just a bit in advance for this monetary exchange, instead of acting surprised that the cashier would ring up your order and tell you the total, and then spending 2 entire minutes fumbling around for a wallet, and then another minute trying to figure out if you have cash or if you should use a debit card?

Because I think I can speak for the 20 people in line behind me when I say lunch hour is a finite period of time; namely, ONE HOUR, and we're HUNGRY, and those burritos don't pay for themselves you bonehead and I could be noshing on homemade tortilla chips right now instead of standing behind someone who has no concept of simple economic transactions, no idea about the status of his personal finances, and who apparently also lacks opposable thumbs, if that struggle to remove your wallet from your pants was any indication.

Oh, and ordering a burrito without rice, sour cream or guacamole? Next time, just go to Chick-Fil-A. They do chicken and bread really well, or so I hear.

Yours Truly,
Big Arm Woman

How's My Day Going?

So glad you asked.

Like this.

Surreal, frightening and a little bit creepy.

Monday Bits

In what can only be described as a bit of divine intervention, our power went out last night during the Oscars, and so I was spared George Clooney's "Neener, neener neener" self-congratulatory "we're so cool and brave and daring" speech.

George? I will concede that you look nice in a tux, but that's it. If you want to do something daring, how about you adapt The Satanic Verses into a screenplay and star in it? Now THAT would be daring. Texaco isn't likely to issue a fatwa against you over Syriana, but I'm thinking some mullahs won't be quite so circumspect if you get wacky with the prophet.

Speaking of, I've been following the "student tries to run over people at Chapel Hill to protest treatment of muslims story," and I have to admit I'm surprised. Surprised that students aren't shying away from denouncing this guy, surprised that the campus is not yet awash in counselors and "vigils for understanding," and mostly surprised that the student rag ran its own controversial Muhammed cartoon. Of course, these are the students. The profs and administrators are behaving much more predictably, calling for students to remain calm, avoid retaliation, etc., etc.

Yes, we must stop the bloody campus anti-muslim pogroms now! What? There haven't been any? What. A. Shock.

Sigh. I'd ask why academic types seem so bound to assume that non-muslim students are always ready to riot at the drop of a hat when there's no evidence for it, but at this point exploring the default manichaeanism of their thought processes is useless.

How? Just, How?

Dear Possibly Crazy Young Celebrity Chicks of Hollywood,

How is it not possible to realize that you're walking around with your breastesees hanging out during a photo op? Seriously, how?

I mean, okay, if you're Tara Reid then you're probably too drunk to feel the liberating breeze on your parts, or maybe you're just so used to being topless that having clothing ON is a bizarre change in sensation, but I don't think Lindsay Lohan is Tara Reid--for one thing, drinking involves ingesting calories, and it's obvious that Lindsay has been on a boycott of those for a while.

Is it the cocaine? The amphetamines? General mental decline? Does breast augmentation surgery desensitize those puppies so much that you can't actually feel the sudden blast of cold air?

I understand the need to be fashion forward if you're young and hot and trying to get movie roles that don't feature a volkswagon bug, but can't you at least get your stylist to use a little adhesive, Miss America style? 'Cause if I wanted to see nipples, I'd just buy the latest issue of MAXIM or something.

Sigh.

Just Me and My Microwave

Wreaking havoc, Goodfellas Style. Watch out, Boopsie! I'm coming for you!

Via Feral Girl.

Angel Dust People Iced: Thirty Six Car Bombs Planted: Two Favorite Weapon Microwave Oven Arms Broken: Four Eyes Gouged: Twenty One Tongues Cut Off: Thirteen Biggest Enemy: Boopsie Get Your HITMAN Name

Home again, home again

jiggety-jig.

Just got back from a fun-filled weekend in St. Louis at the AAAS conference, which for you humanities types is the MLA of science, except without the silliness and overuse of colons in the symposia titles.

A large paleontologically-themed time was had by all, as was toasted ravioli and decent beer from the micro-brewery down the street.

And yes, I did go up in the arch, where the day's conditions were accurately listed as "movement." It was a bit like being on a boat, only 630 feet in the air.

Side note - midwestern friendliness kinda creeps me out, and I'm not sure why this should be the case, as I am genetically southern and therefore used to that sort of thing. Maybe it was the accent...

More later, as I regain my brain and get out from under two tons of work-related crud.

Gifts I Can Use

Oh, right. It's Valentine's Day. I have neither great love nor flaming hatred for Valentine's Day--I just think that if you're going to stick a random gift-extorting holiday in the middle of the bleak midwinter when everyone is feeling pale, doughy, cold and bloated, you should at least remind people that the gifts can be something useful, or that your beloved would really like.

So if your signifigant other shares any traits with yours truly (which might be a stretch, because I'm not like other girls, according to my co-workers, husband, and every other man I've ever known, but whatever...) here is a list of Valentine's Day gift-giving do's and don'ts:

Don't give me lingerie. Seriously. It's mid-February, I'm still coming off of the "pale, bloated and doughy need to hibernate with flannel and comfort food holiday binge," and I do not even want to THINK about what I will look like encased in satin, lace, or feathers. And if it comes with a thong? Oh, hell no. Even if you do give me lingerie, you will only see it as part of the lacy blur that races past you en route to heavy blankets or a flannel robe. Check the calendar, Romeo. February! It's COLD, dammit!

Same with chocolates. I love chocolates, but don't need any more help with the "bloated and doughy" thing.

No jewelry. I am hard on jewelry, so I will probably destroy anything you get me within 15 minutes of receiving it, I hate "accessorizing," and I always forget to wear it anyway. Plus, every time I look at it I'll be thinking, "How many pairs of shoes would that money have bought? Or DVDs? Or video games? Ack! The wastefulness of it all!"

Flowers? Eh. They're great to get when it's spontaneous; not so much when it's expected, and then they just die. And also I hate chrysanthemums. Violently. Tulips, please.

So I hate everything, right? Not exactly. Here's my idea of the perfect Valentine's gift:

1. Cook dinner.

2. Present me with my own copy of God of War.

3. Get the hell away from me for the rest of the evening.

My needs are simple, people. Possibly not very romantic, but simple.

You may send Hublet your condolences in the comments.

Shakespeare in a Day

So Hublet and I spent this past Saturday down at Davidson with 10 teenagers from Sampson County, an Activity Bus that was possessed by Satan, a bunch of snooty high schoolers from Mecklenburg County, and the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Let me preface this by saying that I love theatre--I loved it even when my acting professor senior year wanted me to be Blanche DuBois because he felt that I needed to "explore my sexuality;" I loved it when I stage managed for a tiny start up theatre troupe in Winston-Salem where my "booth" was a choir loft in an old church, my cues involved poking the sound and light guys (who sat right next to me in the pew) with my elbows and pointing at my book, and my house lights were cued by tugging on a string which was attached to the finger of a guy named Bob who sat in the back of the church next to the light switch--and this weekend really made me miss all that.

Well, maybe not the part with Bob and the string, because that church had bad wiring and the lights would always short out halfway through the show and I'd be tugging the string and the lighting guy would be running to the basement to hit the breaker box and Bob would be snoozing and the actors would still be gamely plugging along onstage--I could have done without that drama, really. That and the fact that our opening night audiences were always mostly comprised of prisoners out on a good behavior field trip. But all the other stuff? Yeah.

Anyway, we were there to do "Shakespeare in a Day." The idea was to have 8 different schools perform one or two short scenes from either Romeo and Juliet or Midsummer Night's Dream. They would string the scenes together and end up with 25 minute versions of each play which would be staged in front of a live audience at the end of the day. Hublet's kids had gotten their lines down the week previously and done some rudimentary blocking, but he teaches English, not Drama, so we're talking bare bones here.

Hublet arose at 3:00 a.m., got to his school by 4:45 a.m. and they left for a 4 1/2 hour ride at 5. I met them at Davidson at 9:30, and at 10 we did a tour of the new performance hall at Davidson (which I would have killed to have performed on, by the way--holy cow!--you can do any show there with the exception of Phantom, because they can't fit the crane inside the building. But anything else is a go--they did Angels in America last year, complete with giant cracking wall and floating angel.). Then the RSC led the kids through dance and fighting workshops, did run-throughs of the scenes, then took them to the stage to do a tech run-through, then back upstairs to work on fine tuning, then back for a full rehearsal, then the curtain rose at 5.

The RSC staff were amazing! Imagine taking a year's worth of acting classes in two hours. They pulled great stuff out of the kids, and watching a bunch of sarcastic, "yeah whatever" kids transform into excited performers of Shakespeare was just beyond words. The staging was bare bones--we set Midsummer in a mall, and scene changes were marked by folks "walking" around the mall and striking "mall poses" every so often to the beat of the mall muzak. It worked really well--you could follow the change of actors and actions easily.

Most of the other schools were there with drama teachers. Most of the other schools had vibrant drama programs, and the kids knew their way around a stage. We had travelled the farthest of anyone else, and we were probably the only group there with a real honest-to-God pageant princess (Miss Teen something-or-other) among our number. We kind of stuck out, in other words, and consequently got taken under the wing of one of the program's directors, which was awesome, and had nothing at all to do with the fact that he found Hublet's "Randy Quaid quality" fascinating or that we bribed him with homemade Snickerdoodles. (NOTE: Hublet doesn't really look like Randy Quaid, but he reminds everyone--including random british people--of Randy Quaid. It is a mystery for the ages.)

None of the other kids sounded quite like ours did, either: listening to Antonio deliver Demetrius' line to Helena like this, "Ah luv thee knot thay-er fore pursoo mee kno-ut!" was jarring, but also hilarious and refreshing, and the kids just ate up the audience feedback.

The best part was seeing these kids from Sampson County get over their whole "red-headed stepchild" complex and realize that they belonged onstage just as much as anyone else. And our Rude Mechanicals doing Pyramus and Thisbe at the end just kicked all kinds of humor ass, even when our little Wall flubbed a line--she recovered and kept on, just like my fellow Winston-Salem actors used to when the lights would blow out in the church.

God, I love theatre.

Snarky Question of the Day

RE: the whole Mohammed cartoon thing -

If no images of the prophet are allowed, then how do people know that the cartoons are of Mohammed?

Just wondering. I mean, we wouldn't want to have an embarrassing "Oh! Sorry I firebombed the EU headquarters--I thought you drew the prophet, but actually now that you mention it, you're right. It might not even be him! After all, it's not like we have a bunch of graven images lying around..." moment or anything, would we?

Sigh.

Embarrassing Gushy Nonsense

I love Emma Thompson. No, really. Love, love, LOVE Emma Thompson. Of all the female celebs out there, she's really the only one I'd like to meet for lunch. She's smart, and funny and doesn't seem stuck up or pretentious--Gwenyth "ANTONY Hopkins" Paltrow, I'm looking at you, sister--and I can totally see just hanging out and shooting the breeze with her and laughing my butt off.

Emma Thompson helped fan the flames of my Jane Austen habit.

Emma Thompson is the perfect Everywoman.

Emma Thompson is the reason that I can no longer stand to even CONTEMPLATE Kenneth Branagh. Honestly, leaving the fabulousness that is Emma for that beetle-browed E.M. Forster adaptation botching/couldn't do Austen if you beat her/goth wannabe strumpet Helena Bonham-Carter? The hell, Kenneth!

I should have known that the moment you broke it off with Emma there would be no leash on that pretentious streak of yours, and boy howdy, was I right! Frankenstein, anyone? Woof. And after you and Emma had done Dead Again, which I still love, definite cheese factor aside. You are dead to me now, Kenneth. But I digress.

What has brought on this embarrassing font of Emma love? Well, I took The Boy to see Nanny McPhee this weekend, while Hublet was down at Davidson doing the "Royal Shakespeare Company helps your high schoolers perform Shakespeare in a Day" prep class--remind me to gush about that later; I mean, the dang RSC tutoring a bunch of kids from Sampson County on performing Shakespeare! I would have killed for that experience when I was in high school, or in college when I actually did some acting. Yes, I am excited about this upcoming weekend, can you tell?

Anyhoo, I loved Nanny McPhee. Quite a bit went over The Boy's head, and I worried that the fact that Colin Firth's character spends a lot of time talking to corpses might bother The Boy, but he didn't even notice, and munched his popcorn and giggled at the silly stuff. Heh. I initially typed "stiff" for "stuff" back there. Heh.

And Emma wrote the screenplay, which I hadn't realized, and which just fanned the renewed flames of my Thompson lurve. Thus my undignified gushing in this post.

We will return to your regularly scheduled bitching and moaning tomorrow.

Hee.

Brokeback Squadron. Just, hee.

Better go see it now, before Tom Cruise sues somebody over it.

via Defamer

I seem to be on a roll

With the fluffy pop culture stuff this week. This is partly due to the fact that in real life, I am almost ready to strangle any number of department heads and development officers--the closest things to matter and anti-matter in academia--due to their inability to Listen To The Words That Are Coming Out of My Mouth and their tendency to put their own preconceived notions in place of my words.

Irony would like to point out the humor inherent in the narrow-mindedness of academics, and I would like to tell Irony to shut her cakehole. Grr.

Anyhoo, I came to two important decisions this week.

1. I'm totally over Lost. I want someone to shoot, in order: Ana Maria, Jack, Kate, Charlie, and the entire Others/Deliverance subplot, and replace the entire thing with the Locke/Sawyer insult comedy hour. Bleh.
2. This is my new TV boyfriend. Hublet gets Heather Graham, I get Jensen Ackles. I am ignoring the fact that there is some serious cradle-robbing going on there--it worked for Demi.

And also, I hate Magruder--the final boss in the Gun game. Quit shooting me, dammit! Plus, who has body armor in the old west? Yeah, you might have the voice of Lance Henriksen, but that's not enough to save me from irritation when I have to spend 30 minutes jumping around and trying to time my Dukes Of Hazzard inspired dynamite arrows to coincide with your walking over a freaking GEYSER! ARG!

Shallow? Hell yeah. And speaking of shallowness and the critiques thereof, read this post, to which I can only respond "Amen." Irony, she is a hard mistress, but I've learned she can be bribed with beer.

Everybody's Doing It

So I did, too.

Welcome to the Republic of BigArmia! They keep telling me crime is a problem due to the lack of prisons. Bah. Our currency is the gun for a reason, people. Not my fault if my fellow citizens refuse to use the currency efficiently.

Tea for two

Herbal tea always sounds like such a good idea, you know? "Oh, I have the sniffles and a chill--I know! I'll wrap my fingers around a nice hot mug of cinnamon apple nutmeg spice and be cocooned in healing herbal goodness!"

And the boxes always smell so nice, too. It makes you all excited as you heat the water, anticipating the fruity spicy goodness to come.

But the boxes lie, people. Herbal tea does not taste like the box smells--it always tastes like the freaking box, and for some reason I have remained unable, after 30-odd years on this planet, to remember that.

It's like every winter, when I'm cold and tired of coffee, my nose takes over and tells the rest of me, "No, this time will be different! Trust me! It won't taste like cardboard with a slight hint of chamomile--it'll be tastebud nirvana, and you'll be just exactly like all those people in the commercials, safe and snug inside your New England cottage, watching the perfect snowfall while a roaring fire keeps your feet warm!"

And instead I'm stuck in my cold office with frozen toes sipping lukewarm sugar cardboard water that still has the nerve--the NERVE--to smell like apples!

I am so going back to decaf Earl Grey. At least it tastes like something.

Cry Freedom

Perhaps this is an example of how oblivious I am, but it took me two full days to notice the presence of an overweight woman dressed as the Statue of Liberty waving at passing cars from the grassy knoll in front of the local Texaco station.

Actually, now that I think about it, the first day (Tuesday) she was dressed as Uncle Sam, but it was dusk and I only noticed her because the star-spangled hat added enough height to make her visible over the cars in the other lane.

She was toting a sign the first night, but again, dusk, so I couldn't read it, and she hasn't had one since.

And it's driving me nuts, because I cannot for the life of me figure out why someone would decide to dress up like an icon of American freedom and stand at a random intersection all alone without any sort of signage explaining the gesture.

I'm fairly certain it's not promotional for the gas station or nearby shopping center, because there would be something announcing the purpose of the promotion. And hello? July 4 is a looooong way away.

Is it an ironic commentary on war, oil and freedom? She's standing near a Texaco, which has connections to Texas oilmen and by extension our president...

Is it a "thank you, servicepeople" thing? If so, she's about an hour north of where she should be.

Is it a symbolic reminder of our freedoms, yay America, thing?

Or is it an experiment for her sociology 101 class, and she's recording the reactions of the people nearby?

I really wish I'd been able to read her sign the first night, because now I'm thinking I'm going to have to pull into the Texaco station and ask her what the hell she's doing.

Has anyone else's town been set upon by random national mascots?

Fun New Links for a Fun New Year

Because it's always helpful to point this out:

Sometimes the media gets it wrong. I know you're shocked! Shocked! And sometimes their reporting is a bit hysterical! I know! Hard to believe.

Andrea's gone and made herself a new blog. I don't even have the energy to tweak my 3 year old graphics, let alone fiddle with a whole new bloggery thing.

Academics get large monetary grants to study stuff like this. Why? Because people really are stupid.

In 2006, guys can be jerks, like, instantaneously! Guilt free! Thank you, gods of technology, you heartless bastards. And ladies, if a shmuck named Andrew Weigle tries to hit on you, kick him in the nuts.

Hope your New Year's celebrations were celebratory, and stuff.

And in other news, I suck at Candyland

All things considered, this has been a great Christmas. I mean, sure, we had to deal with the whole "drag the four-year-old all over North and South Carolina and create draconian gift-giving guidelines for our relatives while pretending to like congealed orange gelatin salad with (gag) Cool Whip topping and then rush home, clean like a maniac and collapse after too many Irish coffees on Christmas Eve and then cook like a fiend on Christmas Day and then wonder where the hell the past two months have gone, exactly, and ohmyGod are those WRINKLES on my FOREHEAD and more gray hairs and I'm getting old and one day my Boy will leave and I will grow old and feeble and die! die! die!" thing, but aside from that I had a pretty good time, enjoyed (mostly) my relatives, survived the Christmas Eve "family" church service and got gifts that I like.

Well, except that the track suit I got turned out to have low rise pants, which--hello? You cannot actually jog or do yoga in those unless you just LIKE sharing your buttocks with random passersby, but you do look tres spiffy if your definition of "exercise" includes a pedicure and a leisurely saunter to the hairdresser. Which, okay, I could live with that, and besides I run at night and maybe the reflection of headlights off of my scary pale butt-flesh could save me from being hit by a car...but maybe I'm overthinking this and should just see if a few well-placed safety pins might solve the problem.

And I am loving Gun, because in what other game can you run a side quest called "Save the Whore!" where the quest's title text--Save The Whore!--appears across the top of the screen for the duration of the quest and a helpful health bar labeled "whore" lets you know exactly how much saving she needs? And then when you rush into the saloon and kill the bad guys she gets all snarky and wanders off. Fun, fun game.

I am not loving Candyland quite so much, however, mainly because I cannot win at the damn thing, and it's getting annoying. I mean, all I'm doing is drawing cards, okay? There's no strategy involved! And I cannot win! My constant Candyland humiliation is only compounded by the Boy's "poor mommy" hugs. But I persevere, and at least he's getting a role model for losing graciously out of it. Well, mostly graciously. I haven't set the board on fire or anything--yet. At least it's not Chutes and Ladders, the longest, dumbest, most irritating children's game ever invented.

Enjoy the New Year, everyone!

Yes, Dammit! I'm a blue-collar scholar!

In grad school we had a fellow TA buddy who liked to put aside his Shakespeare on the weekends in favor of NASCAR, wrestling, and Budweiser. We affectionately referred to him as the "blue-collar scholar." He's now an assistant DA for one of our nearby counties, and what a long, strange trip that was for him.

I'm remembering that term today as I peruse the blogroll after a long absence and check out what my virtual pals are reading.

See, the Christmas holiday usually affords me a lot of free time to read, but this year, my heart wasn't in it. Still haven't finished Jonathan Strange, and it's not because the book is bad, it's just that every time I pick it up and feel the heft of it, I get tired.

I even got a big ol' bookstore gift card, and have only managed to spend a small portion of it, 2/3 of which were a calendar for my office and yet ANOTHER Thomas book for my beloved Boy. I bought Eragon, just 'cause I've been curious for a while and hey! It's not like it was my $9.95.

And here's the sad part--the highlight of my Christmas reading experience was the autobiography of Ric Flair, the Nature Boy. Yes, the wrestler. I know. I will pause here while you mock me. But it was funny (sometimes intentionally), and it was truly a window into a world that, if you grew up in NC in the 70s and 80s, was always present in the background.

So while my fellow bloggers are busy parsing the readability (or lack thereof) of Heinlein and purchasing A Reader's Manifesto, I'm learning all about the crimson mask, and the proper way to walk the aisle, style and profile. Woo!

Just call me the blue-collar scholar, brother, and I will meet you in the squared circle! Woo!

If Ever a World Needed Saving

This one is from Hublet--warning:

What you're about to read is not an uplifting holiday story, but it is real, and is what he, his school, and we've been occupied with for the past couple of weeks.

In the early morning hours of last Tuesday, a student of mine from second period snuck out of her grandparents’ house, walked across the street into the woods, gave birth, cut her own umbilical cord, left her child in the ditch, went back in her grandparents’ house and re-entered her bed, where she almost bled to death.

Her grandmother discovered her there and they rushed her to the hospital. It was not until she was in the emergency room that my student told anyone about the baby. I have heard that she admitted hearing the child crying as she left it in the ditch, and that she covered it in leaves, but don’t know this to be fact, yet. EMS workers rushed to the scene after her confession, found the child (the temperature that night had dipped into the twenties), and even detected signs of life. But it was too late. He or she was pronounced dead at the hospital.

My student now sits in jail, charged with second-degree murder, with bond set at $75,000. I know little about her family, but her mother is dead (apparently of overdose) and her father (an addict, I hear) is not around. Very few people were aware she was pregnant to begin with, including (apparently) her grandparents. I had heard the rumor earlier in the semester, but she was small and dressed in baggy clothes – in fact, she dressed much like a boy. If it was true, I had thought, then she was no more than 3-4 months along. I was wrong, it turned out. She had tried out for girls’ basketball about a month ago, and, when the coaches saw her lift her shirt to wipe some sweat, they sent her home. Two weeks ago, her drama teacher (who knew) told her to stop lying on her stomach as she sprawled out on the stage to watch a movie in class.

The news made its way through school over the course of Wednesday and Thursday, and it was unavoidable wherever one went. No faculty conversation went on long without reference to it. In second period, a wild sophomore section if there ever was one, I simply asked everyone to respect the situation, fearing off-color jokes or inappropriate remarks. Instead, there was a sobriety that I had not thought some of those kids capable of, even at such a time as this. The kids were clearly affected, and these were the first moments of seriousness I had ever seen from a couple of them. They were, and I suspect still are, shocked. An often-petty girl, who I have been butting heads with off and on all semester, suddenly seemed as mature as my best kids. “I’m really angry with her, but I’m also really sad for her,” she stated to the class after we all discussed the situation for a while. In summing up our feelings there was not much anyone, students and teachers alike, could add to that statement.

But it does not end with that statement, either. Unanswered questions, unutterable images, and unmerciful grief – these are left in the wake of such news. What kind of awful life has she had? Was this planned or not? Who is the father, and was intercourse consensual? Did she carry it out in cold blood, or was she in tears the whole time? Did she feel trapped into doing this, and if so, why? Did she feel like there was no one, NO ONE, she could have talked to, and given the child to (NC law, btw, states that one has seven days after birth to give a child to a responsible adult without consequences)?

I know few answers to any of this. What I do know, and anyone in contact with this story knows, is the hell that the imagination naturally leads us to. A wet, writhing, crying child died a miserable, cold death, with no one there to hold it or offer comfort. That is the singular, awful fact; it is comparable to the stories of cruelty Ivan Karamazov lists in unrelenting fashion for his priest brother in an attempt to disprove, or at least undermine, God. My student’s baby, a miracle of life, literally knew nothing on this earth but pain, misery, and suffering. We flinch from the images that come to mind, for to think on them for any amount of time is to shudder, or curse, or yell, or cry (I’ve done them all in the past week). I love my student, and I fear what the future brings her. But whatever the motives, whatever level of punishment deserved, whatever unimaginably horrible extenuating circumstances in my student’s background, the image of that child is what has been burned into my mind.

The people that dwelled in darkness have seen a great light. In this season of the religious calendar, we focus more on the main clause, and not on its subordinate – and perhaps rightly so. But this Christmas day my student will be in a jail cell, accompanied by her torments; her child never had a chance to know Christmas day at all. The web of sins is woven so densely that any attempt to fully understand this entire mess will, I am convinced, fall short. It is a mystery, answered only by the greater mysteries of faith, of virgin birth, and of resurrection. If ever a world needed saving, it is ours.

I want my tacky, shiny Christmas!

I have to admit, I am decidedly lowbrow when it comes to Christmas decor. Sure, I can appreciate the homes that had an army of landscapers on ladders painstakingly tracing every branch of their 150 year-old oak tree with lights and importing German firs for use in the door wreaths, but while that stuff is pretty to look at, it doesn't stir my heart the way overdone, haphazard redneck decor does.

I love driving by homes that sport an army of inflatable characters on the lawn, with blinking mismatched lights clumsily strung onto any available surface. I appreciate the effort involved in getting those plastic reindeer and sleigh to balance on a rooftop, and I can even tolerate the "turn your garage door into a billboard with the amazing message projector" doo-dad, even though I secretly feel like that's taking the easy way out.

So I've gotta tell you that I'm a little disappointed in my rural county this year, because so far there's been a dearth of redneck chic, and far too much tasteful festooning of porches with garland, ribbon, and white lights. I plead guilty to the latter, but in my defense just let me say that I left a dead shrubbery smack dab in the middle of the front of the house so that it would look balanced when I put the light nets across the hedges. And we do have a multicolored lighted train in the front yard, with a blinking animated steam cloud. The Boy loves that train. So I am trying to pull my weight.

But the final straw came last week, when The Boy and I were headed home. We were stopped at the last light before our street, when I looked to the left and saw, alone and forlorn on a front porch devoid of any other light or decoration, a lighted palm tree. That was it. Just one lighted palm tree, and nary a sign of either a cleverly ironic motif or the homeowner's Hawaiian heritage.

Now that's just laziness, people. If the folks in question had decided that Christmas really meant pink flamingos, palm trees and a Tiki party, and had gone all out, I could have appreciated that. But one sad little lighted palm tree, all alone? It made me weep for the lost opportunity.

I pointed it out to The Boy, who stared for a minute and then said, "That lady shouldn't have a sad palm tree light on her porch!"

Indeed, son.

Maybe it's just me

But I totally do not get the whole "omigod Narnia is, like, a christian allegory disclaimer" thing going on in the press and publicity for the movie. It's as though these people are shocked that biblical themes ever manage to find their way into literature or something. Which, as a lot of journalists hold degrees in english lit., frankly mystifies me.

The hell, people. Where were you in high school when we discussed the meaning of the Christ figure in literature? Does Bartleby the Scrivener ring a bell?

I mean, is it really so freaking amazing to realize that if you're watching a movie that contains the whole "good versus evil" motif you might be able to draw a parallel to, like, God and Lucifer? That sacrifice, betrayal and forgiveness--which happen a lot in literature, film and real life, by the way--are also biblical themes? And that this might explain some of the Bible's continuing appeal?

I am beyond tired of Hollywood missing the point--AGAIN--and figuring that making Narnia is going to tap into all that mysterious Christian money, you know, because there's an ALLEGORY in there, and we all know they just went nuts over that Mel Gibson Jesus movie, and then managing to piss off the holders of the aforesaid Christian money with condescending "It's got Jesus, so come on out of your holy survivalist bunkers and join the real world!" messages, while simultaneously trying to reassure "real people" that they should still go see it anyway, because it has this ass-kicking lion in it and big battle scenes, and no one will be handing out Jack Chick pamphlets in the lobby or anything.

It must never occur to them that "real people" and "those scary Christians" are one and the same a lot of the time, and that they all pretty much just want to go see movies that don't suck, with stories that resonate.

I hate Hollywood.

But I do plan on seeing the movie, if I can just find the key to the Big Arm Jesus Bunker's front door.

My Eyes! My Eyes!

Well, actually my virtual eyes, since the offending scene in question will never (thankfully) be filmed. But just reading the description of this now has the images stuck in my head.

Pardon me while I go bleach my brain.

Thanksgiving Pop Culture Update

So, I got to see two movies over Thanksgiving--Walk the Line and Goblet of Fire. Super brief synopsis: Johnny Cash - yay!; Harry Potter - eh. The latter kind of surprised me, especially as I felt myself getting irritated at Voldemort mincing about the graveyard like a great undead pansy. Don't get me wrong--I love Ralph Fiennes, but for some reason I wasn't so much afraid of the menacing evil as I was rolling my eyes at his incessant cape swirling and going, "Oh, please. Drama much?" And while I realize that they were condensing a 700-odd page book into 2 1/2 hours, the movie was still too long. Yes, the dragons were cool. But did the chase scene HAVE to resemble 2Fast2Furious on a broomstick? And go on for, what, a year?

And characterization, which had to take a backseat to all the crap that happens in book 4, suffered horribly. Ah well. Goblet of Fire is really my least favorite of the series so far, so that may have a bit to do with it.

But that is neither here nor there--what I really wanted to mention was the long, torturous gauntlet of previews for movies that, let's see...will suck like a nuclear powered hoover.

Did you know that Woody Allen has a new movie coming out? And that it's actually just a compendium of three movies that have already been done before, one of them by Woody Allen? Well, he does! Try not to wet yourself in anticipation for his upcoming End of the Affair/Fatal Attraction/Crimes and Misdemeanors movie called--I forget, because I was too busy trying to calculate Pi to the 100th decimal to fend off death by boredom. It has English Accents! And Unhinged Women! And a Murder Mystery! Woo! Note to Woody: I think that by 2005 it's safe to say that we've left no stone of your sexual peccadilloes unturned via your moviemaking. Please stop. It's just embarrassing.

Speaking of sexual peccadilloes, the Gay Cowboy Movie preview managed to do to our theatre what no movie I've ever attended before did--make over 100 people cringe palpably. It was hilarious. Note to Hollywood PTB--don't put the preview for Brokeback Mountain in front of a movie about a country singer who found Jesus and turned his life around. Gay Cowboy Movies are kind of a niche market, your leather and rawhide fetishes notwithstanding.

And speaking of Jesus--what the HELL is up with the Superman preview? Somewhere in space, Jar-El voiceovers about sending his only son to save humanity. Literally, he says, "So I will send you, my only son, to save them." Who knew that Jesus wore tights? I didn't. And also, hubris much? Dude. Green ROCKS can kick your ass.

King Kong will probably be excellent and I will not go to see it because the story just pisses me off too much for me to enjoy the Peter Jackson artistry. When they make one where Kong doesn't die, give me a call. I HATE dead animal movies, a result of being scarred for life at age 7 by Old Yeller. GAH!

Hope your Turkey Days were excellent!

Ask and Ye Shall Receive, Part the Second

For Emily, a series of Haiku inspired by the beauty that is Paris Hilton's chihuahua. Although the request was for a REALLY LONG POST, because Emily is apparently both a sadist and a masochist, I feel your pain, readers, and I believe that the austere brevity of the Haiku is really the only form that will do these creatures (fill in your own blanks here) justice.

The smallest Hilton
Stuffed into a Prada bag
I hope she pees there.

A chihuahua's thoughts
"Hey, you dumb bleached blonde bimbette,
I HATE the club scene!"

Oops! Doggy misplaced,
Maitre d's scramble about
It sucks to be them.

Advice to Paris,
the next time you buy a dog,
lay off the goofballs.

The chihuahua shakes
if your owner was Paris
you'd need downers, too.

Ask and Ye Shall Receive, Part the First

Okay, first the easy ones from Wednesday's All Request Hour of Power here at the Big Arm Blog-O-Rama:

1. Joshua asked for book/movie/tv recs. Hmmm...well, I can tell you what I'm watching and reading now, if that'll help.

1. Reading: Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, which is totally Jane Austen meets Harry Potter, and a great read. Unfortunately, I have only been able to make it through about 20 pages a night, and at that rate I will be reading this book until 2008. It's long. In the queue--Flyboys by James Bradley, who wrote Flags of Our Fathers, about the flag raising on Iwo Jima. I also recently finished The Historian and I am Charlotte Simmons. Simmons was flawed and too long but interesting, and I really loved The Historian. I'm also a Harry Turtledove alternate history geek, so pick one of those and I've probably read it. Oh, and of course Terry Pratchett, and my pal Feral Girl has promised to lend me Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys.


2. Watching: Supernatural, which is like the X-Files when it was fun--an interesting larger story arc but with self-contained episodes each week; Veronica Mars, although season 2 isn't quite as compelling as season 1; Lost, although I TiVo it and fast forward through the parts I find irritating, and there seem to be more of those this year; and The Showbiz Show with David Spade because it is dark and evil and makes me giggle.


3. Movies: Have Finding Neverland and Kung Fu Hustle at home now from Netflix; will probably take Boy to Chicken Little this weekend, as he has been agitating for it for quite some time; am looking v.v. forward to Narnia, Harry Potter 4, and the Johnny Cash biopic in the coming month.

As for Emily, Marc, and PersonFromPorlock's requests...stay tuned.

Teaser

Hey guys! Thanks for the requests--I've got a few items in mind for later today.

But first, a couple of notes:

1. Buy Joanne Jacobs' book! I haven't read it yet, but if it reads anything like her blog, it's bound to be both wry and informative. Wryly informative?

2. Hooray! They FINALLY killed the right character off on Lost! Woot!

3. Personal note to AOG--Dude. That's why our catbox has a big ol' lid.

More later...

Taking Requests

Yeah, a little frazzled, a little burned out. Just for a change of pace, I thought I'd entertain some requests for blog entries about particular topics. Hopefully the requests will be for easy things that I don't have to spend too much time thinking about, because frankly I haven't been able to tear my brain away from the biomarker BNP-32 for the past couple of days.

Best thing about my job? I get to talk about the interesting fruits of the scientific process, without actually having to do science myself. Is that great, or what? Reaping without sowing--the American dream writ large.

And here's a warning--if I get no requests, or if I don't like the ones I get (woman, thy name is fickle biddy), then I'm going to have to publish the rant about the rampant scatalogical misconduct of SOMEONE in my building. I guarantee you will be icked out, so consider yourself warned.

Soooo, any requests?

The Gauntlet

I have now been on hold with AT&T for 7 minutes. The helpful voice recording that I encountered seven minutes previously (after punching in my phone number, language selection, menu choice, and the value of Pi to the 300th decimal point) had told me perkily that I would be assisted by an AT&T representative in 8 minutes---ooh, which it has now been!

Don't think I'm not onto you, AT&T. Your futile attempt to wear me down in the hope that I will reconsider my decision to cancel your superfluous long distance service will not work. For I am made of stronger stuff, and frankly, that perky voice on the hold tape is only reinforcing my will.

Later...much later...No, I do not want to change my plan. No, I do not want to do a pay-per-call plan at .10 a minute (taxes and fees still applicable, of course). I told you AT THE BEGINNING that I just wanted to CANCEL my long distance. That's all. Seriously. CAN. CEL. As in gone, poof! voila! Bye-bye!

Please quit talking to me in your impenatrable accent, "Lucy." I can sympathize with the fact that you're probably losing a lot of customers like me due to better deals from cell phone companies, but really, that is SO not my problem, and if you had a better wireless coverage plan, well then maybe we could talk, but you don't so, again, STOP TALKING TO ME AND JUST CANCEL THE DAMN SERVICE!

Yes, I realize that by cancelling my long distance I am inviting hordes of rampaging vikings to come torch my house, and that the world will end in a fiery cataclysm and that we will all most probably regret our rash, impulsive decision to sever our bonds with you, oh master AT&T, but actually? I think I'm okay with that. So can you please CANCEL MY LONG DISTANCE NOW?

Cancer? Really? A lack of long distance has been linked to rare, bizarre, painful and terminal illness? Well darn the luck! I STILL WANT IT CANCELED!

And could you just pass along to your bosses how much hatred I have for upsells, resells, and high-pressure sells?

Thanks.

So, How've You Been?

I've been busy, and full of blog ennui--tired of getting irritated by the same old crap, tired of reading about it, watching it, and hearing it.

Plus, I managed to throw my back out while in the freaking SHOWER, so it's not like I'm having a banner week here.

I've also been obsessively watching the Ghost Hunters and that Most Haunted show, which is hilarious in the extreme. Let's see...we'll put a highly suggestible family equipped with "nostril cams" in a spooky old house, separate them, and laugh as they freak out all over the place. And you can't tell me the crew isn't above making things go bump in the night if the spirits aren't willing to cooperate. Good times, people. Good times.

Remember that guy who said we could cure aging? Well his Q&A session is online. My take is that the guy is a "big picture person," meaning he's all about the grandiose and just believes that the details will take care of themselves.

As an ENTJ and a detail person, this annoys me no end, so perhaps I'm not the best one to judge, even though I pretty much already have.

From the I Don't Get it Files

This has got to be the fastest celebrity-scandal-turned-character-rehab (no pun intended) thing I've ever seen. And I don't get it, because it's not like we should have been surprised to begin with. How do you THINK models stay thin? Drugs, eating disorders, plastic surgery, or a combination of all three, that's how.

Meanwhile I am battling a headache brought on by eye strain brought on by reading a bunch of meaningless crap, so I'm not able to draw any meaningful comparisons between the Moss affair and, well, anything else.

Sudoku, take me away!

Paging Darwin

It's over, people. We have finally reached the point of trying too hard to save idiots from themselves. Sometimes, society just has to let go and allow people to be really, really stupid. If they win a Darwin award for their efforts, well, that's just too damn bad. With great freedom comes great responsibility, or something...

Case in point.

End of Days

You know, one of my favorite pastimes is bashing Anne Rice's purple prose and over-the-top brood fests, but this is just too much, even for me.

Just...I'm out of words, except to note that reading the interior monologue of a (most likely) broody seven-year old Messiah might cause my brain to liquefy and run out of my ears. And I say that as a good--well, mediocre, probably--Methodist.

Although if she's actually allowed an editor to, you know, read over it first, it might make a difference.

On a related note, the emergence of the Olsen Twins from Hell makes me think that maybe our days truly are numbered, or if they aren't, they really really should be. Girls, if your biggest goal in life is to "stay white," well, I'm thinking you don't have anything to worry about.

Quote of the Day

"It affects business because I can't whack away on my BlackBerry like I used to," he said. "It's just too painful."

Well, okay then.

Seriously - wimp. Talk to me after a marathon PS2 session, when not just my thumbs, but my entire HANDS are gnarled, useless claws.

Put THAT in your Blackberry and whack it!

Damn Tricksy Weather

You turn your back for one minute--just one! And all of a sudden the little tropical depression is THE LARGEST STORM EVER IN THE HISTORY OF ALL STORMS!

I don't know about you, but I'm well and truly tired of the freaking hurricane one-upsmanship going on this year. And I don't even live in Florida.

Related note - sorry for the continued radio silence. I barely have time to remember to practice personal hygiene just now, let alone try and think up something pithy and blog-worthy. This should change soon.

But thank God our academics are hard at work on the thorny questions that plague mankind. Just makes you sleep better at night, doesn't it?

Tanka Trucks

Have you heard about the latest Japanese poetry craze? It's Tanka, which is Haiku but with two additional lines of 7 syllables at the end. So instead of the standard 5-7-5, you have 5-7-5-7-7. Lots of fun! Here are a couple of Tankas inspired by my weekend.

My only darling Boy
Decides "mommy" is passe';
Now he calls me "mom"
And he calls his father "dad"
What the hell? He's only four!

Is it just me, or
has anyone else noticed
that an '08 win
by Clinton means that we'll have
20 years of dynasties?

And is it just me
or does anyone else think
that 20 years of
prez-es from two families
is lame? New blood now--WALKEN!

Nuttin'

This is truly a got nuthin' week. And it's a shame, because with a little more time I would have liked to post about threatening grievous bodily harm upon a line-breaking second grader and her do-nothing dad, the slice-of-life goodness complete with pit bulls on flimsy leashes that is Selma's Railroad Days, and the fact that Batman has taken up permanent residence in our home.

But alas, work has been from hell, I haven't even had a decent lunch break to read other blogs, much less formulate my own, and when I get home I'm TIRED, dammit. The additional Batman wrangling is wearing me down as well.

Related note to self: Although you would think that "putting a blanket over your head and leaping blindly from a great height" is a self-evidently bad plan, you do need to spell that out to a four-year-old. Repeatedly. Perhaps I should put one of those # of days without a broken bone counters on my blog, because obviously it's just a matter of time.

SO. Here's some food for thought, kiddies. If education schools are vetting folks for being proper GoodThinkers before allowing them to teach, what do you think the end result will be? Here's a clue - don't look for our math/science scores to improve anytime soon, as everyone is too concerned with politics in ed theory to bother making sure that these future teachers can actually, you know, teach.

Obviously, I'm not the target demogaphic

For this ad campaign. Because I have always hated Smurfs with a fiery passion. Fiery.

I always wanted Gargamel to rip the heads off of those useless blue pukes and tapdance on their stupid little mushroom houses until there was NOTHING LEFT.

Turns out that only the Belgians are capable of doing that. Huh. Go figure.

Full disclosure - I always rooted for Sylvester and Wile E. Coyote, too. And liked to pull the heads off of Cabbage Patch dolls.

Monday Advice

If you haven't, then go forth and rent/view Bubba Ho-Tep right now.

I'll wait.

No Surprise Here

All those political quizzes I take put me almost smack dab in the middle of everything. This one was no exception, though these things annoy me due to my tendency to "yes, but" or "no, but" almost all of the questions. Anyhoo - my results, in case anyone cares...frankly, I thought I was more of a pure capitalist than this.

You are a Social Liberal (63% permissive) and an... Economic Moderate (56% permissive) You are best described as a: Centrist Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid

Hating My Dog

I was going to do a big link round-up of the "Spectre of the N-Word and its Implications for Free Speech on Campus and Beyond," but couldn't find one of the main editorials I wanted to use online, so nevermind. If you want to read one of the articles that sparked the idea, though, go here.

Plus, I've been too busy today hating my dog. I have a long and storied history of hating my dog, because I am convinced that she isn't really a dog at all but a miniature hellhound trapped in the body of a weiner-beagle. I should have known when I looked at the sign on her kennel at the ASPCA which read "Owner Deceased." I believe she killed that owner, and has been trying to induce a brain aneurysm in me ever since I brought her home.

First, there were two or three vets who were convinced she had distemper or parvo and would die. Alas, no. $700 later, she was fine.

Then there were the recurring bouts of gout. Organic dog food--available from California via mail order only, natch!--solved that problem, huzzah.

Then there was the separation anxiety that only happened if I deviated from my regular schedule For Even One Minute. And the odd coincidence that her fits of destruction only targeted random things I really liked, rather than the door, floor or furniture. She would take favorite shoes from my closet and destroy them in the middle of the floor. She ate my Nightmare Before Christmas Burger King watch, which really hurt.

Not to mention her eating disorder, which has led to the consumption of a pound of raw bacon and a fun weekend spent toting her and her inflamed pancreas all over town in search of a vet open on Memorial Day, regurgitated Spaghetti From the Compost Pile (complete with ants), regurgitated beetles (I don't know--don't ask), and the regurgitated corpse of a baby bunny. That was last week. Whee! Naturally, enough of these substances stay with her that explosive diarrhea is the result. Spot shot and the rental steam cleaner are my only saviors.

We do not speak of the deer leg incident, which will forever live in infamy.

As Gertie approaches the twilight of her life, the random messes are becoming more frequent, so we've started leaving her in her kennel during the day with food, water, and lovely soft blankies. Gertie, naturally, hates this. She pretty much hates everything, and always has. Which is good, because when she likes you she has a tendency to pee on your feet (ask Brad and Feral Girl about that), but I digress.

So Gertie has started hiding in the mornings. Today, she hid so well that Hublet and I were convinced she hadn't returned from her morning jaunt, and canvassed the neighborhood. I left water on the porch, a spare key for the neighbor, and called her to ask her to check on Gertie. The Boy was rather concerned--though I cannot imagine why. She doesn't have much use for The Boy, and he is continually annoyed by her begging.

The neighbor called me two hours later--after I arrived an hour late to work--to say that she had wandered over to see if Gertie had returned, and had called her name. Gertie then appeared at the window inside the house, barking. My neighbors are fairly convinced that Hublet and I are flakes anyway; I'm happy to know that my stupid dog has cemented that perception.

I hate my dog.

Weirdos

This article is great, though it makes me wonder just what I've missed by spending my whole life as a milquetoast Methodist. Not that I WANT to experience the lunatic fringe--I'm just wondering where these folks hang out. My favorite paragraph:

I am tired of hearing people I work with say that God is talking to them like He talked to Moses at the burning bush or like He talked to Abraham. I'm weary of people saying God speaks directly to them about mundane matters of reasonable human choice, so that their choices of toothpaste and wallpaper are actually God's choices, and therefore I need to just shut up and keep all my opinions to myself until I can appreciate spiritual things. I'm tired of people acting as if the normal Christian life is hearing a voice in your head telling you things other people can't possible know, thus allowing you a decided advantage.

I mean, if all this were really happening, wouldn't these people be picking better stocks?

via Andrea.

Emily Post Has Nothing on Me

Okay, back and refreshed from the one-day pity party, starring me! Woo!

A few doo-dads I've been meaning to mention:

This is for those of you planning weddings. Two words: Reply card. Failing that, email address or phone number. See, sending out just the invitation with the words "reception to follow," but no indication of when or where or how you're supposed to convey your intentions concerning attendance to your hosts is, well, stupid. Because then your guests will scramble around to email you that they're coming, and will show up expecting the reception to be at the church because no alternate place was announced, and then they'll panic when they realize that the reception is being held elsewhere and they have no idea how they're supposed to get there because no one bothered to tell them ANYTHING beyond the fact that there was, indeed, going to be a wedding, but fortunately one of their other out-of-town buddies had been to that place once before and so they'll form a caravan and make it there and THEN have to wait 45 minutes to eat a meatball because no one knows what the bride wanted, then they still have to drive an hour home. Then they'll write mean things about your wedding on their blogs and really, you probably have enough on your plate without having to worry about stuff like that.

So two words: reply card. Or Emily Post. You pick.

Watched Supernatural last night, and think it has potential. Although on a related TV-viewing note: The Hell, WB? Putting Veronica Mars up against Lost? Are you TRYING to make my head explode? Arg.

And finally, I have some Amazon.com certificates burning holes in my pockets. Read any good books lately? I'll read anything from Terry Pratchett to straight history.

Happy Birthday to Me. Dammit.

Today is my birthday, and I am old. Old and dried up and trying really hard not to think about it, because you know--OLD. As Hublet likes to tell me from time to time as we share poignant moments in The Boy's childhood: "Well, that's it. Now we're just gonna get old and feeble and die." Hublet also likes to remind me of the gaping chasm of 15 months that separates our birthdays. Hublet has quite a bit to answer for, actually. My birthday present had better be pretty damn good.

But I digress. I think I have successfully managed to postpone the cliche' of the mid-life crisis until now, because I was still safely in the "mid-thirties" zone. Alas, I have begun to slide into "late thirties," and it is pissing me off. Certainly I should be rich, famous and adored by millions by now, and certainly my bright idea to choose an English major should in no way be affecting my trajectory to fabulous success! Now that I think about it, maybe the suckiest thing about the late thirties slide is that my ability to delude myself is disintegrating. Drat.

Well, that's part of it. The other part is that my body is crapping out on me. Pretty much the knees and the ovaries have had it, or so the doctors say, so there will be no sibling for The Boy unless we opt to purchase one, and even if we did opt to purchase one, there's no guarantee that my knees would work well enough for me to trundle said sibling between points a and b. Oh, and may I just add that the fertility drug Clomid, while prescribed like Pez to women over 35 by OB/GYNs everywhere, is decidedly NOT candylike in its side effects. Or maybe I'm just so old that my body instinctively reacted to the surfeit of estrogen by Completely Freaking The Hell Out. And also? I now apparently have arthritis in the middle joint of my middle finger on my right hand. This is annoying, because the joint is getting bigger, and it actually HURTS when The Boy holds my hand and squeezes it. He's FOUR, and hardly Charles Atlas. Thank you, distaff side of the family, for bequeathing me arthritis and osteoporosis. Seriously. I'm thrilled. Would it have been too much to ask for the bodily decrepitude to wait a few years before piling on in a geriatric-making frenzy?

No two ways about it. Aging sucks. I cannot WAIT for forty. Bleh.

You not make that to prate all day's work.

Worst. Phrasebook. Ever.

And here are some fabulous uses of the language by allegedly native speakers.

And now for something a tad lighter

Because I need a distraction.

I have finally found it: the one bumper sticker in all of creation that I would allow to sully my vehicle, but only if I could turn it into a lighted message board on the roof of my car:

Forget world peace. Visualize using your turn signal!

It would also be nice if I could change the message depending on the offenses of the other drivers. Some alternate constructions I would probably enjoy using:

Visualize putting on makeup AT HOME!

Visualize your lane, and stay in it!

Visualize a new muffler!

Visualize tying down that crap in the back of your truck!

And finally, in the event my PSAs are ignored:

Visualize my middle finger!

Monday Haiku

My Weekend:
All hail the Spot Shot
Removes paint stains from carpet
Caused by "helpful" Boy

The Hurricane
The Weather Channel
Sends their spastic broadcasters
To stand in the wind

Academic Nonsense
Hey, professor Best?
You are a raging nutball
Britain says, "stay out!"
(FYI - last link is subscriber only, sorry.)

Well Good Grief, I'm Mother of the Year! Not.

First off, let me just say trust Paglia to bring out the controversy/commentary. And also, kudos to the participants for managing not to devolve into a feces-flinging flamewar. That's a badly mixed metaphor, but that's all I've got today. Sorry.

My final take on the Paglia thing--in other words, my personal experience with which I will now bludgeon you--is this:

I've hung around the ivory tower, I've done the community theatre thing (alas, Guffman never did show up), and I've done the church thing. Ironically, the idea that I was part of a specially annointed and pretty dang smug about it clique was much more prevalent in academia and the arts than in the "faith-based community," or in my bucolic blue-collar neighborhood. So there you go. And that's why Paglia's article resonated. Ta-Da. Although I must say, if the best you can do as an artist is produce a jar full of urine with a plastic holy relic in it, well, maybe a little castigation is in order. Seriously, dude. It's called art class. Look into it.

Now on to more important things; namely, my utter failing as a mother.

We managed to get The Boy up and out of bed at a decent time this past Sunday, and I was pleased that he didn't reject my choice of attire--a white polo shirt and some cute navy and white houndstooth-patterned shorts. No ironing necessary! Cinnamon buns for everyone! Huzzah!

We made it to church in time for the sermon--lately this is quite the accomplishment for a number of reasons, most of them so snarky that my keyboard will burst into flames if I type them--and The Boy whispered to me:

"Mommy, these pants have funny underwear."

So I looked. Oh, dear. The cute little checked pants had little mesh briefs sewn into them. And a drawstring.

Then I noticed that whenever The Boy stood up straight his super cute white polo shirt rode up above his belly.

I had sent my child to church in swim trunks and a belly shirt.

Well. There goes any sartorial superiority about "proper church attire." Because unless you show up for worship in a tube top and speedos, The Boy's got you beat on the dressing down front.

I'm available to accept my Mother of the Year Award whenever you're ready.

@#(*&#@$(^@(*#$&!!!!!

Okay, for some reason the comments pop-up box is hosed. If you click on the permalink for an individual entry, you can read the comments that way.

Do. Not. Ask.

Unfortunately, you can't add any comments. I have checked the permissions on all the comments files in MT and that's not the problem.

And yes, I am bitter about having to revisit the whole update/reinstall/give up and go to WordPress thing. Grr.

Email addy is on the right over there, if you've something to say.

UPDATE: Oh for crying out loud! Never mind. AAARRRGGGHHH.

These are the People in Your Neighborhood

And some of them are kind of nutty. Hublet and I were chatting with our neighbor who lives at the end of the cul-de-sac the other evening. She had come out to ask us if we'd been struck by the doorbell ringing bandits yet--we hadn't, and all agreed that school starting again would be a good thing--who had paid her a visit at 1:30 a.m. Ah, the teen years. Those sad, lame, painful years of crushing boredom punctuated by moments of peer-induced panic, overlayed with a veneer of ironic detachment. Gah. My Darwin-inspired theory on teendom is that if you can make it through that, you're going to do just fine the rest of your life. But that's not the point.

In the course of our conversation, our neighbor casually mentioned that a fellow who lives up the street from her (his house is between hers and ours) had been seen on more than one occasion and by more than one cul-de-sac resident lurking around in the wee hours dressed in camoflage, complete with mask. Umm, okay. Why he would do this is a complete mystery, and I'm hoping that he's merely an insomniac reliving his glory days of playing "army" in the woods with his friends. Yes, I know that's unlikely, and yes, I am glad that we have a security system installed, as well as a seriously pointy cavalry sword. I am also pleased to report that his house is currently on the market. If anyone out there is looking to relocate to a starter home in a sleepy country development, CALL ME. Today would be nice.

Then I started thinking about the "nutty neighbor" phenomenon. Growing up, there were two folks in my neighborhood who were a bit off. I believe one of them was mentally disabled, because she would stand on the corner and ask my friends and I if we had any smokes every time we passed by going from one house to another to play. We were nine at the time, and while I'm sure there were some proto-delinquents out there puffing away at that tender age, none of my friends qualified. The second one was what my dad used to call a "professional crank." From what I could gather, he didn't like the gummint. His means of protest, therefore, was to mow his lawn clad only in a jock strap. Hilarity, of course, ensued. He did this fairly often, as well.

But bumming Camels off of nine year olds and doing the jock strap cha-cha on the front lawn as a form of tax protest are a far cry from wargames in the wee hours.

Did I mention that our neighborhood is quite the restful, bucolic sort of place? We have a pretty decent Fourth of July parade, too, and we're only 2 miles from the elementary school. House for sale, y'all! CALL ME.

And Now, A Moment of Shameless Fangirling

For Michael Yon's Dispatches. I know, I know, the whole entire freaking world has linked to them by now, but dang! They are addictive, mostly because they offer a real behind-the-scenes feel for what's going on in Iraq, as opposed to the daily US Bodycount pie graphic that USA Today seems to feel is sufficient, but also because they are just really well-written.

And so I fangirl. Fangirl, fangirl, fangirl. And hope that Yon and his fellows manage to stay safe--the post about the really big IED that almost blew them all up is riveting.

Vacation!

Yeah, content has been light this week, and will be non-existent next week, as I go forth to frolic in the Atlantic Ocean.

See you on the 15th!

Hublet's Wednesday Review Corner--Oxford American Music Issue

Just got our latest issue of The Oxford American, the second since their most recent resurrection (BAW reviewed the Southern food issue in the spring, then threw the magazine away before I finished it – not that I would complain, of course). I must say they are 2 for 2 with two HR’s this year, perhaps because they decided to quit trying to be “The NewYorker-except-with-occasional-photographs-of-fields-and-shacks”. Yay for the OA! Anyway, this latest issue would be hard to screw up in any case, because it is the annual (except for those pesky non-publishing years) Southern music issue, complete with the expected eclectic group of songs on cd. This is probably the fifth such cd we’ve gotten from them, and each is a gem. There are 29 tracks this year, on what may be the best one yet. So far, here are my favorites from the ’05 collection (enclosed in the magazine if you buy it off the rack):

#4 – “Sally Jo” by Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder –I haven’t heard a bad recording yet from these guys.

#13 “Ballad of a Teenage Queen” by Cowboy Jack Clement – If you know the original done by Johnny Cash, you know it is a little bubble-gummish compared to a lot of his work. Typical of Cash, he sang background vocals for Clement on this re-recording, which is played at a slightly slower pace and with stripped down instrumentation. Wow!– suddenly the song becomes something totally different and profound.

#15 “Symphonique #6” by Moondog – I haven’t read the article about ole’ Moondog yet, but he is bound to be interesting from the sounds of this instrumental piece. It is like a cross between Beethoven, Dixieland Jazz, and Tango music.

#20 “Piece of My Heart” by Erma Franklin, who was Aretha’s older sister, and who recorded this song a year before Janis Joplin. Unbelievably good, every bit as good as Joplin’s version. It’s not often (thankfully) you’ll catch me singing, out loud, words like, “Didn’t I make you feel, like yooooooouuuuuu were the only man?” But I can’t help myself with this one.

#27 “Suspicious Minds” (Live Recording) by Elvis. I’ve always liked Elvis without loving him. But this recording blows me away. After cutting the record a couple of weeks earlier, he sings it here during his Live in Las Vegas concert in a way that gives me chills – when he sings, “We’re caught in a trap” over and over again, I believe the hell out of him.

There is also good stuff from Buddy Holly, Nat King Cole, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Johnny Winter, and Zora Neale Hurston (!) among others. And you shouldn’t miss a real gospel classic from 1950: “Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb”. Lawd Yes!

Lame Monday Filler

Busy. Oh so busy. And tired. And those stupid Phil Collins songs from the Tarzan soundtrack won't stop running through my head. So here's a quiz you can take, and here are my results:

the Cutting Edge (52% dark, 47% spontaneous, 22% vulgar)

your humor style: CLEAN | SPONTANEOUS | DARK Your humor's mostly innocent and off-the-cuff, but somehow there's something slightly menacing about you. Part of your humor is making people a little uncomfortable, even if the things you say aren't in and of themselves confrontational. You probably have a very dry delivery, or are seriously over-the-top. Your type is the most likely to appreciate a good insult and/or broken bone and/or very very fat person dancing. PEOPLE LIKE YOU: David Letterman - John Belushi

Quote of the Day

"What's the big deal?" he asked. "We're born naked into this world. Why can't we walk around in it without clothes from time to time?"

Umm, because you're goofy looking and scare young children? Or because aesthetically speaking, I don't need to see your pimply ass besmirching an art museum?

Seriously, folks. The human body is a lumpen meaty hunk given to unfortunate moments of unsanitary fluid excretion, that is riddled with bacteria, bumps, and inappropriate hair placement. I only want to see that when it's been airbrushed, toned and oiled, okay? The rest of the time I expect the sweet, sweet barrier of cloth to interpose itself between my overtaxed retinas and your flab. Thanks.

Guess this means I'll have to turn in my Crunchy Granola Let it All Hang Out, Dude membership. Drat.

A Mile in Saddle Shoes

Perhaps Robin Ghivan has never been to church in the south. That's the only explanation I can give for her bizarre psychoanalysis of the Roberts family's sartorial choices, which Lileks skewers here.

But my response upon seeing the Roberts family was--eh. They must shop at Cameron Village, home to every upscale boutique in Raleigh. Ghivan acts as though bishop dresses and seersucker for toddlers is unusual. Pah. She should come to my church--the profusion of beribboned bishop's frocks and saddle shoes would probably cause her to foam at the mouth and fall over dead.

I'm just gonna file that bizarre article under Trying too Hard. Hey Robin? Better luck with the metaphors next time, sweet thang.

Wednesday Links

My son has begun an illustrious career in fan fiction. I say this because he has already discovered the allure of the "Mary Sue," and insists that I add him into the plots of fairy tales like Jack and the Beanstalk and the Three Little Pigs. He looks to be specializing in "crossover" fan fiction, because not only does he make me insert him into the action, he drags people like Scooby Doo, Darth Vader, and Shemp from the Three Stooges into the mix. I'm so proud. Especially of the one where Darth Vader, Shemp and The Boy have to fight the giant who lives at the top of the beanstalk.

Ever have a day when you were so damn sick and tired of other people going on about their uniqueness and feelings and how everyone needs to "understand them" that you wanted to kick them in the eye? I have lots of those days. Here's a refreshing antidote/rant brought on by emotive commenting on supreme court nominees. It'll singe your eyebrows right off. And that's a good thing.

Erin's got two good posts up (just scroll down) on the current fights that FIRE is involved in. Apparently, mob rule is okay--as long as the mob does what the administration wants them to do. Gah. As tiresome as it is, you have to keep paying attention, because apparently some people never learn. Irony would like to point out that a lot of those learning-challenged types tend to gravitate toward academic administration. Thank you, Irony. That will do.

Administrative Update

Thanks to those of you who told me the comments were hosed--I was beginning to feel very lonely and sad.

Looks like a spam attack broke my MT Blacklist, so I just deleted the darn thing, which is a nice stopgap--for the five minutes it'll take for the spammers to reappear.

I'm thinking that WordPress may be the way to go. I'm pretty sure my hosting company has the minimum requirements--the only problem will be finding time for the upgrade. I'm not about to try and load this stuff on dialup, so I'll have to use my lunch hour.

Bear with me, and if you have any suggestions, put 'em in the comments, or if those die again, just email me.

Harry Who?

Bought it and read it. For those of you who are interested, my review appears in the extended entry, because it is CHOCK FULL OF SPOILERS!

I repeat--SPOILEY MCSPOILEY-PANTS!

For those of you who aren't interested, or aren't finished, a brief take: good setup, flawed or odd characterizations. Still looking forward to #7.

Okay, so Snape is evil, Malfoy is a craven coward, and Dumbledore is dead. We're all set for the great Horcrux Quest and Final Confrontation that will be book seven. Those were the good points, and the action, when it happened, was well done. The look into Tom Riddle's history was good as well. The last 5 or so chapters were the payoff. Harry seemed to be on a more even keel emotionally this book, but everyone else seemed off, and not in the "hormones do wacky things to teenagers" way.

Seriously, what happened to make Hermione and Ron dismiss Harry out of hand not once, but several times, and even when confronted with evidence? The Ministry battle had been a fiasco, but Harry is right more often than wrong, and Ron and Hermione know that. It just seemed as though Rowling had to make them behave that way just to advance the plot, which was unfortunate.

Why did Hermione screw up the questioning in Knockturn Alley? Is this the same girl who managed to lure Dolores Umbridge to her doom? Why did she refuse to offer help? You cannot expect the reader to believe that she was so undone by Ron that she forgot her best friend was preparing to battle the ultimate evil.

And Ron--well, why was he even in this book except to pledge undying loyalty to Harry in the last two pages?

Ginny gets the Mary Jane Watson role from the first Spiderman movie, and seems pretty blase' about it, really.

I got the sense that Rowling wanted to concentrate on Harry, Voledmort's backstory, and Dumbledore in this book, but was afraid that would be too dark. So you get the "lighter" romantic subplots, which wouldn't be a problem except that given the characters' circumstances lightheartedness is sometimes tough to achieve, which I think leads to some oddly out of character moments.

Overall, though, I enjoyed the book. Still not as good as Azkaban, but a fun read.

Now I just have to wait however many more years for the last one.

Jitters

I'm jittery today. And no, it's not because I'm afraid of anything. In fact, I'm a little bit jittery because I think I'm about to reach my boiling point with those who ARE afraid of everything that doesn't conform to their view Of How The World Should Be. So take that double-edged sword and fall on it, tiresome pronouncers of how the Other Side is the Harbinger of DOOOOOOMMMMM! You're mentally lazy and you suck. The end.

Maybe it's the coffee. Maybe it's yet another round of being disappointed that I feel disappointed about something that I thought I was done being disappointed about. How's that for oblique? But it's more likely the coffee. Maybe.

And I'm jittery/excited about the new Harry Potter book. Sorely tempted to drive 22 miles to attend a midnight party, in fact. But I'll probably wait until the last book is out and The Boy is old enough to read and possibly enjoy some of the Potter oeuvre.

Finally, I am beyond icked out at sockless men in dress shoes. And not because they are oh so daring with their bare man-skin ankle cleavage. No, I am icked because I know about men's feet and what they do in dress shoes. They sweat. They sweat like tiny workhorses with hairy toes. And because they sweat, they smell. So when I see unclad man-foot wedged into a wingtip, all I can think about is the soup of flesh and sweat going on in that unforgiving leather shell, and the resultant funk of forty-thousand years that will be visited upon that man's spouse, should he have one. Note to the brave un-socked--if you're still single, check out the hairless wrinkled toes that emerge after a day sans absorbent foot barriers. Breathe in deeply. Now think. Could there be a connection between that aroma and your current lack of matrimony? It's a poser, isn't it?

This article suggests "no show" man's socks. Which poses quite a different problem--how to avoid the bunchy sock-eating aftermath that occurs when shoes meet low cut socks. And why? So we can see your hairless ankles? It hardly seems worth it.

Ah well. The bright side is that naked man ankles are nowhere near as frightening as this. I am speechless, beyond suggesting an intervention.

Embarrassing Personal Confession, Followed by a Lengthy Self-Justifying Explanation...Until I Give Up and Say "Screw it."

Hublet and I watched Brat Camp.

I'll pause here while you gasp in horrified dismay.

Here's a paper bag to breathe into--I hear it really helps with the hyperventilation.

Yes, I know. It's exploitative! It's eeeeeviillllllle! And it's probably not even that "real," given that these kids are baring their souls on national TV.

But.

Even though the teenagers have been reduced to characters complete with helpful labels like "compulsive liar," or "hostile outcast" or "tried to stab his twin," and even though you spend a hell of a lot of time wanting to shake these kids, or their parents, or maybe all of them in a crazed and indiscriminate manner, it's fascinating. And sad.

But mostly sad, and not in the "poor production values, Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire" kind of way. It's sad because you wonder how these kids' lives would have been different if they had different parents. And that's REALLY sad, because you know that at least these parents care enough to try something, to finally admit that they need help, that they don't know what to do and that they're not so far gone that they're going to just kick the kids out and let them take their chances.

It's sad because as much as a 17-year-old's decision to be a complete ass is totally their own, and that they're ignorant, arrogant and possibly violent little assholes, you realize that parents can love their kids and still really suck at parenting.

As a parent, that's kind of horrifying to contemplate, in a "there but for the grace of God go I" kind of way.

Hublet and I were fascinated. I think it was cathartic for Hublet, as he kept saying about the "compulsive liar" whose parents were completely weak-willed and affluent, and who spoiled her horribly, "God, she's just like so-and-so the drama queen from last term!" And I'll be upfront about it: watching a spoiled, lying brat get her comeuppance--and from other brats, yet--was a beautiful thing. So. Catharsis. And schadenfreude. Lots of that. But also lots of "pleasepleaspleaseplease don't ever let that be my kid ohpleaseohpleaseohplease."

And there's the rooting for these kids to get over themselves and grow up a little. They're just kids, after all, some of whom have been dealt a pretty crappy hand, even though they think they're far too sophisticated and independent for the likes of, you know, authority. I'll pause here while we all take a moment to remember a firmly held conviction or two from our teenage years that now makes us cringe in horrified embarrassment. Yeah, that was fun, wasn't it?

So we'll watch next week, when Isaiah, the "hostile punk," tries to make a break for it into the Oregon desert winter. Personally I'm hoping they tackle him.

Til Monday

Nothing to add today--the Command Post is a good central link dump for info on the London bombings.

Have a good, and safe, weekend. Back Monday.

Boston Pops, What the Hell?

I'm wondering if they took the "pops" portion of their name a mite too seriously yesterday. Hublet and I settled down to watch The Boston Pops celebration and fireworks last night after a day filled with the hometown parade, much hilarity on the newly-acquired Star Wars-themed slip and slide, a trip to the Durham Bulls game wherein The Boy got to meet Spongebob Squarepants (Boy's verdict: "Spongebob was too big," as the mascot was far too wide for The Boy to embrace properly and I think he got a bit of a facial scuff from the polystyrene sponge head) and a trip to the end of our driveway to view the local fireworks display.

ANYWAY, we were all settled in to watch the Boston Pops and the fireworks--particularly the big 1812 Overture finale with stuff blowing up as the cymbals crashed--but do you know what we got instead?

Aerosmith! U2! Some freaking whiny country ballad piece of crap followed by R&B garbage from a SOUND SYSTEM! What the hell?

So I thought, "Okay, a nod to the mod. I can deal with this for a minute, and then they will bring on the crashing cymbals!"

But the cymbals were never brought. Nary a crash. Nary a "duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-DUH DUH DUH!!!" The finale was some POS song I'd never even heard of, and by the time we realized that THAT was the finale, it was too late to flip over to PBS to watch a drunken Barry Bostwick announce the DC fireworks which I'm sure would have featured some suitably martial tune-age and stuff blowing up in appropriate 19th century fashion.

Dammit!

But other than that, we had a great weekend. And now I'm heading over to I-Tunes to download some 1812 Overture. And maybe some Anvil Chorus.

Bring on the Crazy!

Scanning the blogroll today, and I have decided to declare Wednesday Crazy Celebrity Pseudo-Religion Day! And I ain't talkin' kabbalah.

First up, check out this link to a link-filled entry on The Religion Whose Name I Dare Not Speak Due to Overzealous Lawsuitage. Read it all, and be amazed/afraid.
(Found via sheilaomalley.com)

Then there's Emily's link to Mr. Cranky's take on Le Cruise. Read the comments at Emily's for a dose of the funny. And for the outrage, which is good in a different way.

Then, download this movie wherein Le Cruise demonstrates that we simply do not know the power of the dark side...poor Oprah.

And finally, go here for all things thetan. It'll make you hope that ol' L. Ron is roasting someplace sufficiently toasty, and that he took his damn aliens with him.

UPDATE: Just came across the Salon article. Another good 'un.

The Pause that Refreshes

My weekend, that is. Didn't really do anything of note beyond a short trip to Target and spending some time outdoors blowing bubbles and watching The Boy improvise Kung-Fu in an attempt to pop them while yelling, "Sock it to 'em! Sock it to 'em!" the entire time. No, I didn't teach him that. Guess he's just expressing the boy gene.

But I did see Batman Begins, and I really enjoyed it. Yes, it's a little slow to start, but it's necessary in order to make Batman more than a sociopath with a cape. I mean, if you're a billionaire who decides to dress up like a bat and fight crime, I'm not gonna begrudge you a little backstory.

And I think Christian Bale is great as both Bruce Wayne and Batman. His perfectly even, white teeth--they mesmerize! Seriously, he's not campy (George Clooney, anyone?), overly goth-broody (Why, Val Kilmer, did you ever do that movie?) or the wrong physique (Michael Keaton had the attitude right, but you just didn't buy that he'd be able to kick serious butt).

The fact that there was a decided lack of crazy costumes and scenery-chewing fests by "legendary Hollywood Actors" was a huge relief, as well.

In fact, the only thing that detracted from the film was Katie Holmes. Not her acting--she can do "limpid, tragic puppy-dog eyes" better than anyone out there. And her role was pretty much what you'd expect as a chick in a guy film. No, the problem I had with Katie Holmes was that every time she came onscreen all I could think about was Tomcruisejumpingonasofaohmygod! Scientologyohmygod! Hasshebeenbrainwashedohmygod! Somebody do an intervention, stat!!!! My disbelief at her real life completely swamped any attempt at suspending it, and thus jarred me out of the film every time I saw her. Fortunately, Christian and his beautiful dentistry more than compensated for that. And I'm serious. When he has on the bat costume and he's grimacing at bad guys, the contrast between teeth and mask is frankly somewhat hypnotic. I guess I'd better stop now before I go down the Berenice path, a la Poe.

But still. I have a greater appreciation than ever for Hollywood publicists. If they were able to keep all that crazy under wraps for that long--well, my hat's off to you, sirs and madames.

Boy, do I need a weekend

I currently have an alternate version of the song "I Feel Pretty" running through my head, and it goes like this:

I feel pissy,
Oh so pissy,
I feel pissed off and miffed and annoyed!

Feel free to continue from there. Why?

1. Flag burning amendment - WTF? Do our lawmakers have the collective memories of goldfish? This is just so, so NINETIES! And unnecessary! Why, you'd think those silly little dilettantes up there in DC have nothing better to do than try to fabricate laws that pay lipservice to half-baked ideas in the interest of re-election...wait a minute...

2. Supreme Court - Seriously, WTF? Crap like that made my family hole up in the mountains with plenty of ammo for a generation or two, spitting and cussing about the "gummint." Oh, but the government would NEVER abuse such power! Haaahaaahaaaaaahaaaahaaahaaaa! Ooh, that was painful.

But it's not all bad--The Boy actually enjoyed his swim lesson last night, venturing so far as to leap from the side of the pool into the teacher's arms. He still got really cold, but refused to come out and was swimming solo with a noodle by the end of the evening.

And I can sleep in tomorrow. And I'll probably finish up The Historian tonight. And there's always moonshine, shotguns and chaw, if the going gets bad enough.

Country Come to Town

So, to Philadelphia and back we went. Saga? You say there should be a saga? Please...

We left at the behind-crack of dawn to get to the airport. Full disclosure - I am a big old FREAK about getting to the airport with plenty of time before the flight; like, a couple of hours worth. I know I'm being weird about that, thus the word FREAK in all caps in the preceding sentence. Seriously, tell me something I don't know.

Anyway, that paid off because we were stuck in the park and ride lot for 40 minutes because one diminutive elderly amputee in a wheelchair managed to tie up not one, but two shuttle buses. The first bus couldn't make the handicapped access ramp go back into place post-deployment and the second bus couldn't even get into the parking lot for ten minutes due to a "gate arm malfunction." Then the lip of the ramp wouldn't go down, then they couldn't get the chair attached properly to the floor of the bus and people were freaking out and it was this whole big thing where obviously no one was blaming the poor woman with one leg but FOR THE LOVE OF GOD you'd think that MAYBE SOMEONE ELSE IN A WHEELCHAIR had USED THESE BUSES BEFORE TODAY and it was 5:40 a.m. and I COULD HAVE CRAWLED TO THE TERMINAL BY NOW and AAAAARRRGGGHHH! Oh, and no more in-flight pretzels. Air travel sucks.

So, we made it to the flight and to Philly and to the hotel. That evening we had our frou-frou outing to the opera: La Traviata. Here are my impressions of the opera:

1. It is too long. Waaaaaaay too long. Yes, you're tragic. Yes, you're doomed. Yes, you show amazing vocal range for someone allegedly suffering from consumption. And yes, you're dying. Still. Some more. A lot. Oh look--you rallied! Oops, you're dead. This really should be a two-hour affair, tops. And while I appreciate the talent of the singers, it doesn't mean that I want to hear them riff a capella for ten minute stretches. I get it, okay? You sing very well. Can we move on?

2. Romantic lead guy? I have two words for you: sit ups. Oh, and Atkins. That's three words total. Your leading lady had sufficient lung capacity to blow you off the stage, and she was one eighth your size. You have a nice tenor, but I don't think its range is tied to your girth. It was difficult not to laugh, particularly when your costume designer made the inexplicable decision to dress you in pants that tucked into little boots. Was he or she trying to make you look like a gray wedge of cheese? And draw the audience's entire attention to your teeny tiny little man feet? What did you do to piss this person off, leading man? You need to make amends. Pronto.

3. Overall, it was a nice experience, but I'll just be re-pinning my Philistine of the Opera badge to my lapel and waiting for the touring company of Wicked to come to town. Hublet, on the other hand, has big Puccini plans. Sigh.

The rest of the trip was good--the conference sessions were actually worthwhile, we ate good food, saw some sights, and brought back souvenirs for The Boy, who was upset that neither Ben Franklin nor George Washington were trains. Then we took a cab back to the airport which was driven by an evangelical Kabbalaist. That was different. Really different. And we got to the airport 2 1/2 hours pre-flight. Yepper, big ol' freak. Me, not the evangelical Kabbalaist.

Now I am home, and tired. But I am reading The Historian, the newest retelling of the Dracula legend. I recommend it VERY HIGHLY. I'm 3/4 of the way through and it's one of those rare books where you can step back and appreciate the artistry and meticulous research of the writing and still be thoroughly engaged by the story. This book is awesome! And very refreshing after all the Anne Rice crapification of the vampire. Hello? Vampires are evil. E-ville. Not your buddies. The idea that ol' Vlad Tepes, a monster in real life, would graduate to being a monster afterward is unsurprising. But the idea that being undead is unclean, unsettling and gross, rather than ethereal, brooding and sexy in a misunderstood goth-boy kinda way? Refreshing. Ahhh.

Goin' Fishin.

Thus far today I have dealt with talking Fruit Loops--the cereal, not the people with whom I work--mapping the location of the nearest Chuck E Cheese so that my parents can suffer through the experience with The Boy in my stead, writing possibly the least informative, most boring feature article EVER (and believe me, the bar is pretty damn high on campus during the summer break for that little achievement), and wondering whether my sinuses will drain sufficiently to allow me to travel via air without my head exploding.

Alas, I am overtaxed.

So here's a short humor piece on plagiarism from Inside Higher Ed. It's just so-so, but the first comment following it is comedy gold, people! Ahh, humorless academics. I love you so!

I am Philly bound. See you next week.

Back Home

No, not dead, just basking in the post Day Out with Thomas lull and wondering when exactly my 3 1/2 year old became such a savvy consumer type. He had a freaking itinerary for us when we got there, and it was pretty darn efficient and had the bonus effect of netting him a few choice Thomas items. Alas, however, I think we may be on the cusp of outgrowing Thomas. He still loves his trains, but he also is making room in his life for Spiderman, Batman and Darth Vader--excuse me, Dark Vader. Although I think he says Dark on purpose because he thinks it's funny that I reply with "DarTTTTTHHHHHHH. Darttthhhhhhh! TTTTHHHHHH! TTTTTHHHHHH!" like some kind of crazed lisping tourettes sufferer. Ah well, a good time was had by all.

Except my sinuses. They did not have fun, unless you consider swelling and exploding "fun." Who knows? Maybe in sinus land that constitues a high old time. "High" being the operative word, since my sinus medication is making me more than a little bit loopy. So if my writing makes no sense, blame the Chlortrimeton.

Posting will be sadly deficient this week as well, since I am conference bound on Wednesday.

Finally saw Team America: World Police, the most gleefully vulgar movie I have ever experienced. I enjoyed it, guiltily, primarily because the soundtrack made me guffaw. It was also fun to see Parker and Stone work out all of their workplace issues via a puppet bloodbath. Maybe all those Outward Bound groups could take note...

Pets I Have Had, and Pets I Will Never Have Again

I'm pretty laissez-faire when it comes to pets--I like the furry critters and I'm not particularly invested in the whole dog v. cat debate--but I've lately determined that when the two animals currently cohabiting with Hublet, Boy and me shuffle off this mortal coil I won't be in a hurry to replace them. Why? Because when I look back at my personal pet history, I get the impression that the animal kingdom would have been better off without my interference.

Let's start with dogs; namely a black lab named Missy that my parents purchased when I was a toddler. One of my earliest memories is being knocked onto my behind in the kitchen by that dog, and wailing. One of my other earliest memories was the sense of elation I felt when Missy ran away. I still harbor an irrational hatred of black labrador retrievers. Hate them. I think Missy picked up on that vibe. But at least she escaped unscathed, unlike...

Cats I have known. First there was Jiggs, a mean as hell tomcat. We have a photo of 4-year-old me sitting on the porch steps with a fearful look on my face and holding an orange blur of claws and teeth at arms length. Jiggs was evil, and he ran away. Which would have been great, except that when I got a cat I liked, Sugar, Jiggs came back. And then Sugar had kittens. The first litter consisted of one sickly kitten that Sugar euthanized by crushing its windpipe. The second litter was healthier. We kept two, Snowball and Muffin (I try not to think about what happened to the other ones, it being the early 70s and the pound being just down the road). Snowball met an unfortunate end because he liked to sleep in the wheel wells of the car and my dad backed over him, leading to a super-traumatic ride to the vet and a giant guilt-trip for my dad. When Muffin--so named because we thought he was a she--reached adolescence, Jiggs reappeared again and in a Darth Vader-like moment almost ripped Muffin's tail completely off. Muffin lived, though, which is more than I can say for Sugar, who got hit by a car one Sunday while we were at church and dragged herself all the way home to die on the porch (the trail of gore proved that). How much pet-related trauma can one pack into early childhood? Quite a bit, if you have cats.

The luck with cats being somewhat sketchy, I moved on to fish. Killed the first ones by overfeeding them, then had a goldfish commit suicide by leaping from its bowl. Sigh.

On to gerbils. I hate gerbils. They're nocturnal, they aren't particularly fun, their tails come off at inopportune moments and they're nasty. Had two--ostensibly two males, until one of them gave birth and then ate the babies, yay--then Muffin ate one of the adults. The other one was understandably never the same. He or she finally perished of fits a few months later. And when I say "perished of fits" I mean it--I walked downstairs one morning to find Mickey (or Minnie--who freaking knew?) jerking and spazzing in the aquarium. Even though I was only nine at the time I was more relieved than anything. Gerbils suck.

Then dogs. Duffy was a great dog--a sheltie--who, along with Muffin, is really the only pet success story I've ever had. He died of heart failure at age 12. Muffin wandered off to die at about the same age.

Now I have Gertie and Kitana, the dog from hell and the most murderous cat in christendom. Between the random deer legs that the dog stashes in the bedroom and the headless rabbit corpses that the cat leaves on the porch, I think I'm done, petwise. When they're gone, that's it.

Although I've never tried my hand at reptiles...

Gag Order

Can we just rope off the entire area around the Michael Jackson trial and quarantine it on the grounds that everyone there is just too damn icky to be allowed contact with the public? Vaseline, Jesus Juice, co-sleeping, former employees with vendettas, parents willing to expose their kids to, well, exposure for money: there's not a winner here, folks, and frankly I would sleep better at night if none of this stuff were seeping into my subconscious. Because try as you might to avoid it, there apparently aren't enough channels on the satellite to get away from it entirely. Just, EWWWW, America! Ewwwwwwww!

In better news, I am awaiting delivery of two fabulous lightsabers to our home. The local gigantic Toy Conglomerate didn't have the colors requested by The Boy: red and green. Apparently I am Darth Mom and he is Yo-Boy. This should prove interesting, mainly because they didn't have these really cool lightsabers when I was a kid trying to be a Jedi. Back in the day we had to make do with the tubes from rolls of wrapping paper, and we were darn glad of those as we duelled uphill in the snow both ways to our one-room schoolhouse where teachers were allowed to beat us mercilessly and no one had invented Gameboy yet...and you kids stay off my lawn! Shamelessly reliving your own childhood through your children is a wonderful thing, and we should do it more often.

Bleh.

As I sit here this morning feeling as though a small alien is well on its way to chewing through the lining of my stomach to sweet, sweet freedom and world domination (DAMN YOU, BURGER KING! DAMN YOOOOOOOOOOO!), I must admit I am less than full of pith and wit.

So here are some links.

An oldie but a goodie that gets resurrected every few months but that makes me laugh each time nonetheless - worst album covers ever.

An odd and oddly amusing campaign for organic produce that utilizes Star Wars -- and yes, I am a sucker for bad produce puns, even though I would rather be killed than consume tofu-- I present STORE WARS.

That's it for me today. There is not enough Pepto Bismol in the world, people. Seriously.

Maxim of the Day

The best lesson to be taken from the whole Deep Throat thing?

Never, ever piss off a bureaucrat.

Take this one to heart, children, from one who labors daily in the bureaucratic trenches of state government. At the very least these words of wisdom will come in extremely handy the next time you have to renew your driver's license.

If it's Memorial Day

It must be time for the hell dog's annual gastrointestinal meltdown.

Regular readers will recall that this time last year hell dog decided to devour one pound of uncooked bacon, with predictably hilarious results which culminated in $350 to the veterinarian for treatment of severe pancreatitis.

Yesterday when I arrived home after purchasing a rockin' pair of Spiderman roller skates chez Target for The Boy I noticed that the dog wasn't eating. As she normally devours everything that holds still long enough, I realized that something was off. She was quiet the rest of the evening, as well.

So before bed last night I leaned down and listened to her tummy. SOMETHING is definitely going on. So I dosed her with Pepto and sent her to bed. Hublet is under strict orders to keep an eye on her.

I'm more curious as to what, exactly, she ate this time. I think she's finding carrrion or equally scary stuff in the woods behind the house, because she recently came back inside after an outdoor jaunt and threw up beetles. Yep, beetles. As in black six-legged thingies with hard carapaces. Either she's possessed by the devil and that's a standard side effect, or she's finding "food" that just isn't what normal non-beetle creatures consider edible and eating it anyway.

After the deer leg incident, I'm going to go with the demonic possession theory. It's easier.

Lost Finale

Is it wrong to laugh when someone gets blown to smithereens by a stick of dynamite? If so, I don't want to be right, because that was simply the BEST use of a post-modern wink at the audience EVER, and if the writers of Lost didn't intend that, well, even better.

Arnz (sp?) was totally a fan feedback character. He suddenly appeared, which meant his death was certain, and he articulated every major nitpick that fans have with the series, like "why are we focusing on just 6 or 7 people out of almost 50?" and "Where have you been getting enough food to stave off major weight loss, Hurley?" Plus, he was kind of an ass, which...writer irritation with fans, much? Projection much? Ah, that made me so very very happy.

I love a show that allows me to indulge my inner English major. My happy at the Arnz explosion even mitigated my irritation at the sudden appearance of random child traders. Lame. What, you have a happy ending with the infant so the other kid has to become imperiled in order to restore the "bad things happening to kids=high drama" TV series karma? Grr. Hopefully it was just a way to get the little kid off the show. But that was my only major nitpick; well, that and the fact that I was a bit disappointed that Jack didn't get blown up.

But there's always next season!

Thumbnail Guide to the Sith

Went to see "THE MOVIE" this weekend. While Hublet believes that Anakin's new name should be Darth Dumb Jock, I enjoyed the visual payoff of the Vader transformation, although I still wasn't convinced by the emotional journey from light to dark.

For those of you who haven't seen it and don't want to be spoiled, I have placed my helpful Thumbnail Guide to Revenge of the Sith behind the cut. For the rest of you: read on.

Thumbnail Guide to Revenge of the Sith

In Space
Obi-Wan Kenobi - "Look Anakin, we have to fly through all this stuff to rescue the Chancellor! I sure hope we don't get horribly killed!"
Anakin - "Don't worry. You've got at least one more episode of this series, and I'm in all three of the next set. Let me take care of everything."
Obi-Wan - "If I didn't know better, I'd think you were making fun of me for being incompetent."
Anakin - "Me?"
R2D2 - "Go go gadget bot zapper!"
Obi-Wan - "Where'd he get that accessory?"
Anakin - "Dunno, but it sure comes in handy. Okay, let's crash land and invade an entire Star Destroyer with two people and rescue the Chancellor!"
Obi-Wan - "There's something funny about that guy, but I can't quite put my finger on it..."

On General Grievous' Ship

Grievous - "I am an asthmatic droid thing! ph34r ME!"
Random Droid - "We're totally being invaded by two guys and Inspector Gadget--wait, wrong movie."
Chancellor - "Yawn. Oh, help. Oh, oh. I am so concerned for my well-being. Help, I say."

Obi-Wan - "We need the elevator."
Anakin - "Watch me leap like a leapy thing!"
Obi-Wan - "Still with needing the elevator."
R2D2 - Go go gadget haxxor tool!
Anakin - "Aaaah!"
Obi-Wan - "What the hell are you doing?"
Anakin - "Demonstrating my l33t Jedi powers. I can jump into and out of elevators at will!"

Chancellor - "Oh, I am so glad you're here. Look out. Saruman is behind you. Wait, wrong movie. Count Dooku is behind you. Oh, oh. I fear for everyone's safety. Eeek."
Count Dooku - "Check my leet Sith powers! I can conveniently beat up one lame-o Jedi by tossing him around and crushing him with random bits of the ship!"
Obi-Wan - "Even though I am a revered Jedi master, I am still surprised that Dooku can attack me! I am actually somewhat lame."

Chancellor - "Kill Dooku, Anakin. He's, like, evil."
Dooku - "You're totally kidding, right?"
Anakin - "Oh, the moral conflict! I really shouldn't, but...OKAY!" [Cuts off Dooku's head] "Oh, I am so conflicted. Let's get out of here!"
Obi-Wan - [conveniently regains consciousness] "Oh, look! The elevator! Thanks for saving my incompetent Jedi ass yet again, super Anakin!"
Anakin - "You're welcome, except now we've been captured by Grievous."

General Grievous - "Moo-ha-ha, Hack, Cough, wheeze!"
R2D2 - Go go gadget lighting bolt/Swiss army knife!
Anakin and Obi-Wan - "Fighty mc fight! Crashy mc crash!"
Chancellor - [As ship crashes and burns] "In retrospect, perhaps I overestimated the Jedi. Fortunately my contract runs through Return of the Jedi, so I know this will turn out okay."

Back on Coruscant

Anakin - "My darling love who I love because she is darling."
Padme - "I am pregnant. And weepy. Very, very, weepy."

Anakin - "I had a dream. I had an awesome dream. Wait, wrong song."
Padme - "What?"
Anakin - "I dreamed you died in childbirth. And since I'm all Jedi-dude, we know my dreams come true."
Padme - "Hey, thanks for sharing that with the overly hormonal PREGNANT WOMAN! Sheesh."

Chancellor - "Herein I begin my plan to turn you to the dark side by dropping anvil-like hints that I am indeed the missing Sith Lord. Fortunately, you are too stupid to get it. Meanwhile, I shall wipe out the separitist droid army which I secretly control, and I will send the Jedi on all sorts of wild goose chases so that I can murder them later. I am very, very good at being evil."
Anakin - "huh?"
Chancellor - "Never mind. I think the Jedi don't trust you, so I'm going to appoint you to the council."

Mace Windu - "You can be on the council, but you don't get the title change."
Anakin - "I shall throw a tantrum!"
Obi-Wan - "Hey, chill out. It'll all be okay. Let me ignore the neon sign on your forehead that reads "Danger! Being Seduced by the Dark Side!" and send you to spend more time with the Chancellor to spy on him while I go on this wild goose chase that has been expertly set up by the chancellor so he gets to influence you more AND gets rid of General Grievous. There's something about that guy...but I can't quite put my finger on it."
Jedi Council - "We know! It's so weird!"
Anakin - "Uh. Okay?"
Yoda - "Going to hang with the Wookies, I am."

Padme - "I shall weep. Some more."
Anakin - "That's getting a bit irritating, you know?"

Chancellor - "Here's where I tell you that I am a Sith Lord, and that I have the power to teach you to save Padme, and you totally overlook the fact that as a Sith Lord I could totally be LYING, and that the dreams you're having about her death could be due to the fact that if you choose the Dark Side you'll totally cause her death. Man, you're an idiot. And I am very, very good at being evil."
Anakin - "I'm telling!"

Meanwhile on Utapau
Obi-Wan - "When Anakin's not around, I am suddenly a competent Jedi. Whoops! Lost my light saber! Well, almost competent, then."
Grievous - "I have the highest-tech high-tech body around, and yet my HEART has an easy access panel? Who the hell designed this outfit?" [Cough, hack, die]
Obi-Wan - "Ha! Hi-ho, Lizard thingy! Awaaaaaaay!"

Back on Coruscant
Mace Windu - "So the Chancellor's a Sith Lord? I KNEW there was something funny about that guy. Stay here. Do not, under any circumstances, follow me."
Anakin - "Okay." [Follows]

Chancellor - "Ha! I am evil! And now I will kill all the Jedi in the room who are wearing red shirts!"
Mace - "But I'm wearing earth tones, so I shall kill you!"
Anakin - "Killing is wrong! He must stand trial!"
Mace - "Excuse me, Mr. Whacking the Head off of Dooku guy? He shoots LIGHTNING out of his HANDS! How exactly do you expect to confine him long enough to get him to trial? Yoda was right--you ARE an idiot."
Anakin - "Nu-uh! I will stop you from doing murder!" [Accidentally cuts off Mace's hands]
Mace - "That's my lightsaber! The one that has Badass M****F**** on it! Aaaaaaahhhhhh!" [Is electrocuted and flung into the sky]
Evil Emperor - "Thanks for helping me murder him! Woo-hoo! And now, even though my head looks like a large buttock, I will finish turning you to the dark side!"
Anakin - "I am conflicted!"
Emperor - "Go kill some kids."
Anakin - "Okay!"

Emperor - "Enact special order sixty-six!"
Soldiers - "Okay!" [Kill all the jedi]
Dying Jedi - "We KNEW there was something fishy about that guy!"

On Kashyyk
Yoda - "Chewbacca! Piggyback ride, give me to the escape ship!"
Chewie - "I only have one line in this whole freaking movie! Raaarrrrrrrrrr!"

Meanwhile, back on Coruscant
Padme - "Oh, Anakin! I saw the Jedi temple on fire and I cried! But now you're back so I'm crying some more!"
Anakin - "Uh, okay. Look, I've got an errand to run."

Obi-Wan - "The Jedi in the temple have been murdered with a lightsaber! And all the Jedi are dead, except...I'd better look at the security video."
Yoda - "You need to look at the video to figure out who did this? Oy. Stupid you are."
Obi-Wan - "Anakin? Oh, man, now I've got to kill him!"
Yoda - "Right. Like screw that up entirely you won't, after being in denial all this time, you have."
Obi-Wan - "What the hell are you talking about?"
Yoda - "Confuse myself, I do. Go to kill the butt-head, I will."

Obi-Wan - "Padme? I can always find Anakin here. Oh, and you're pregnant. Wait a minute..."
Padme - "Anakin's evil? I must find him and cry all over him and make him see the error of his ways! But first, I must cry!"
Obi-Wan - "Anakin must know who the father of your children is!"
Padme - "You are an idiot."

Emperor - "Go to Mt. Doom--wait, wrong movie. Go to the Mustafar and kill all my minions there."
Anakin - "I'm on it!" [Kills everything that moves on Mustafar]

On Mustafar
Padme - "Anakin! You can't be evil!" [cries]
Anakin - "For the love of the Force, woman, stop crying!" [chokes her]
Obi-Wan - "Knock it off! I'm here to kill you!"
Anakin - "Since when did you become competent?"

Back on Coruscant
Yoda - "Kick your ass, I will, butthead!"
Emperor - "Yaaaaahhh!"
Yoda - "Yaaaaaahhhhhh!" [Falls from great height, escapes to Bail Organa's ship]
Yoda - "Suck, I do. Go live in a swamp, I must."

Meanwhile, Back on Mustafar
Obi-Wan - "If you try to jump over my head I'm going to cut both your legs off!"
Anakin - "Hah!" [Jumps, gets legs cut off]
Obi-Wan - "I told you so!"
Anakin - "It's only a flesh wound!" [Bursts into flame] "Come back here, I'll chew your kneecaps off with the power of the Dark Side!"
Obi-Wan - "Hah! And you thought I wasn't competent!"
Anakin - "If you were competent, you wouldn't leave me here to be rescued by the Emperor, you idiot. You'd cut my head off!"

Meanwhile, on Bail Organa's Ship
Padme - "I have no will to live! And also, even though I have only gained 10 pounds in pregnancy--with twins--I have just given birth to two full-term 9 pound babies!" [cries. dies.]
Bail Organa - "I'll take the girl and raise her as a princess."
Obi-Wan - "I'll return the boy to his family on Tattooine."
Infant Luke - "Hey! How come I don't get to be a prince! This sucks!"
Obi-Wan - "I detect a great and future whininess in the Force."

Back on Coruscant
Emperor - "Arise, Darth Vader. I saved you and got you this cool new outfit."
Vader - "What about Padme?"
Emperor - "She's dead, you idiot. What did you think would happen?"
Vader - "Nooooooooooo! Now I must be evil!"
Emperor - "It's hard, being the only smart person in the entire galaxy."

The End

Memoirs of a Food Service Flunkie

So I spent a good portion (okay most) of yesterday reading this blog.

Oh, the memories. I had an on-again, off-again relationship with the service industry during college which culminated in a summer spent as a Waitron at the Eseeola Lodge in Linville, NC. That summer was one of those that you mentally file away as "good fodder for a future novel, if only people would believe that this stuff actually happened." Some of the highlights:

• Living in a condemned building behind the kitchen dumpsters that we euphemistically referred to as "The Last Resort." Seriously. The second floor shower was only prevented from plummeting into the hallway below by a thin, thin, layer of DAP adhesive. Showering was quite the eye-opener.


• Drinking. A lot.


• The second-string chef who grew his own pot and lived in a trailer in the woods, and by trailer, I mean a thing like the one Lucy and Desi were dragging behind their car in "The Long, Long Trailer."


• Pulling my friend out of the box of fireworks after she fell into it clutching a string of lit firecrackers, and watching the whole thing explode. Did I mention we were frequently very very drunk?


• Trying to understand the mumblings of Major Lane, the 89 year old Lothario who had a yearly rendezvous at the lodge (they would push their twin beds together in the room, much to the bemusement of the staff) with his 85 year old lover, a former Miss Sweden, at breakfast. Seriously, when he informed me that his oatmeal bowl wasn't sitting on a doily plate it sounded like this,"Heh hoi-ee haaaayyy! Hair hooo hoi-ee haaaayyyy!" Only Missy, she of the firecracker box incident, could understand a word this man said.


• Having a slight mishap while french-serving the creamed spinach to General Westmoreland which resulted in the General wearing the spinach on his forearm. He was very nice about it, by the way.


• Serving straight vodka to many, many middle-aged women at 10 in the morning at one of the myriad brunches they had catered at their summer homes. The rich? Drunk. Very, very, drunk. Though I suppose I'd drink too if I were pushing sixty and watching my millionaire husband making an ass of himself trying to hit on the 21 year old catering staff (males and females--who says the rich are discriminating?) at a party.


• And then there was the drinking. Of which we did a lot.

Hold Me.

For those of you who are going to see Star Wars tonight, please tell me if this line:

"HOLD ME, ANNAKIN! HOLD ME AS YOU DID BY THE LAKE ON NABOO!"

Is actually in the movie. Many, many earth-shattering decisions in the Big Arm household (such as what Hublet and I will do with our rare free Saturday evening) hinge upon this fact.

Because if it is, indeed, in the movie, then we're just gonna go buy a new video game.

When I was nine, stuff like this didn't matter so much. Alas, I am no longer nine.

Ahhhhh! Oh, Dear God.

Dear Natalie -

Yes sweetie, we know. We feel your pain. We saw you in The Specialist at the tender age of twelve and we know that you can, indeed, act. So to be forever marked out as the chick with a hairdo even goofier than the Double Doughnuts of Doom must be painful. And we know that Lucas' ability to turn even excellent actors into wooden automatons sleepwalking their way through scripts that read like bad 30's wrestling serials written by a drunken Faulkner wannabe must also be a drain on your psyche, if not your sanity.

But this? Dear God, Natalie. You didn't need to perform public penance for your acting sins by shaving your head--or is it a nod to the ancient egyptian form of mourning wherein all body hair was removed?

Fortunately you have the bone structure to pull off this little tribute to Sinead O'Connor until your sanity and your tresses return. It will all be okay in the end, I promise. You may even escape permanent character stereotyping.

But in the meantime, promise not to tear up any pictures of the Pope on national television, okay?

UPDATE: Just to head things off, I know that the hair is supposed to be for an upcoming role. But it kinda kills the joke, such as it is. Oh, okay, I give up. Got nothin' today.

I've Been Memed!

By Tony, which means I have to do it--a girl feels strangely obligated to fulfill obligations to former 5th grade classmates, you know. Plus, it's a bookish-type thingy. So here goes...

1. You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451. Which book do you want to be?
The Riverside Shakespeare. Yeah, I'm ambitious, but subsequent generations shouldn't be deprived of the ability to call one another "clotpoles." Failing that, The Chronicles of Narnia.

2. Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
I had a passing crush on Fitzwilliam Darcy, but I don't count that because it didn't develop fully until after I saw Colin Firth playing the character. I have often wanted to be fictional characters, though, starting with Nancy Drew and culminating with Granny Weatherwax from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. Hopefully I'll be a clever, crotchety old woman one day. I'm already practicing my "Hey you kids! Get off my lawn!"

3. The last book you bought was...?
How Few Remain, by Harry Turtledove. I loved The Guns of the South, and his alternate histories are so believeable--all the little character details...they're awesome! Also, Flyboys by James Bradley. I've got a serious WWII history jones.

4. The last book you read was...?
The Virgin's Lover, by Philippa Gregory. Again, fictionalized history. I am detecting a theme. Philippa Gregory does British history very well, although I was a bit disappointed with her characterization of Elizabeth--she wouldn't have been quite so callow when she took the throne. There were too many people with vested interests in her success to have left her so utterly untutored. The Other Boleyn Girl was a better effort, I think, but that might just be my preconceived notions about Elizabeth I talking...

5. What are you currently reading?
Currently finishing up How Few Remain, then Flyboys, then I plan to re-read book 5 of Harry Potter before book 6 comes out. I also want to get around to reading Wicked, which has been on my shelf for years...I have a bad habit of buying tons of books and then losing interest or forgetting about them for months at a time and then reading all of them in two weeks--lather, rinse, repeat. Speaking of, I think I have a Patricia Cornwell book languishing on the shelf, as well as the latest Tom Wolfe. Ah well, summer is upon us, and I'll have lots of reading time.

6. Five books you would take to a desert island...
Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion because I never tire of Mr. Darcy or Captain Wentworth. Return of the King because it's the best of the Tolkien trilogy, and Prince Caspian, because it's my favorite of the Narnia books and I can re-read it ad infinitum. Finally, De Tocqueville's Democracy in America, because I keep meaning to read it but never have time. On a desert island I'd definitely have time...

7. Who are you passing this stick on to and why?
My pal Feral Girl, because she's great to borrow books from and I need some new reading ideas!

Movies, Movies, Everywhere

Fangirls the world over will probably lynch me for this, but I've gotta get it off my chest: Orlando Bloom cannot carry an adventure movie.

Now, that is not to say that Orlando Bloom doesn't do fresh-faced, naive ingenue well--he does. But that means that he tends to be good in second fiddle roles where he's overshadowed by folks like Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt or evil jewelry and lots of cgi. He's simply too pretty and wispy to be believeable as one who buckles a lot of swash and whose jawline alone is sufficiently strong enough to save the world.

And so that's one reason why I have trepidations about Kingdom of Heaven. Well, that and the fact that it's a giant epic movie about the Crusades, of all things, and as much as the media and Hollywood want to draw our attention to that time period, folks just don't seem to care all that much. Heck, I was training to be a medievalist and I didn't care about the crusades! Just...BORING! Sorry. But still--the crusades don't capture my imagination. Now Jedi knights, on the other hand...or sociopathic billionaires with a taste for vengeance...cinematic gold!

I want my summer films to be light and funny, or else heavy on the adventure with stuff blowing up real good. A movie that drops the ponderous weight of religion and history on the slender shoulders of Orlando Bloom--well, let's just say I'd rather watch Hayden Christensen's wooden Jedi sleepwalk through reams of poorly written angst. Because at least stuff will blow up at the end, and giant Wookies will rip the arms off of stormtroopers and use them as bludgeons. Or something. Plus, you can never have too much James Earl Jones with Asthma. Woo!

And as for the weight of history--if you want to make a summer movie about the dark/middle ages, the Black Plague is the way to go. But we've already had enough movies about the evils of rats to last us for a good, long time. Ben, anyone?

Administrative Update--the contact email address has changed. Please use bigarm at bigarmwoman dot com. I forgot to do the redirect on the comments this weekend, and couldn't figure out why no one had responded to Friday's post. Um, duh.

TV Land

Longer, hopefully more entertaining post later, but I've just got to get this off my chest after last night's Lost:

Dear Shannon -

Die. Plzkthxbye!

Love, America

PS - Please take your loser Dr. "it's all about meeeeeee and I'll cure you if it kills you, unless I'm all mad at you in which case--what hippocratic oath" Jack with you when you do.

Oh, and on a related TV note - Veronica Mars? Best television evah. I came to it late but am totally hooked. Snappy writing, good acting, plots that don't make me want to slit my wrists...yay.

Run Away!

Okay, I don't have much to say about the whole Running Away from Your Wedding at Age 32 When You Should Really Just Freaking PICK UP THE PHONE AND CALL IT OFF Affair, but I do have a couple of words of wisdom for the fiance':

Dude, just let it go. Seriously. And by "it," what I really mean is "her."

Now, I heard some excerpts on the radio of the TV interview that you (the fiance') gave yesterday. Okay, you made a commitment--check. You want her to get help--check. These are good things. But here's where I'm questioning your judgement.

See, your little bride-to-be just fled, in a premeditated manner, completely across the country in order to avoid marrying you. AND, she didn't just leave it at that. No, she also kind of set you up to take some heat for a "kidnapping." I have no idea why someone would do that, but to me it does indicate that at the very least she was having some, shall we say, doubts about the possibility of future marital bliss.

So when you finally see her again, what do you do? You run right up to her and give her the ring back and "make sure she put it back on her finger." Umm, dude? Can you see how that might come across as a little, erm, obsessive and controlling? You've got a chick who is kinda unbalanced making a break for it to Vegas because she's "feeling overwhelmed and suffocated" and you show up and immediately jam the symbol of "overwhelmed and suffocated" back on her finger.

Now I'm not the Amazing Kreskin, but I'm reading the signs here, and they don't exactly bode well. Your bride-to-be doesn't want to be a bride. Really. A lot. And you're either willfully blind to the fact or you think that you can force things to end the way they should. Neither option is a good one.

I'm wondering what other signs you want that prove maybe this isn't the girl for you? Lightning to strike the church?

Sometimes, running away is a good thing. And if I were you, guy, I'd run so fast that I'd leave skidmarks.

Burning Question of the Week

Where did the freaking finger come from?

You know what I'm talking about--the infamous 1 1/2" fingertip that professional con artist Anna Ayala "found" in her Wendy's chili.

Where did it come from? I first thought it was the missing digit in the leopard attack case, but that proved false. Then there were rumors of an inside man from the coroner's office, but I haven't heard anything else.

Do these people not understand how important the origin of the finger is? I lie awake, wondering if somewhere out there a hapless fellow or femme is wandering, cold alone and partially fingerless...or, if somewhere a spirit cannot rest until it finds the theif who stole his or her HAIRY FINGER!!!

Sorry. Too many camp stories.

But I still want to know where one procures a random fingertip. It might come in handy someday.

You're only as rich as you look

Or something.

Came across this post at Asymmetrical Info. this morning, and found it interesting. It reminded me of my favorite line from The Incredibles, when Syndrome reveals his plan to market superhero tech to the masses: "When everyone's a super, no one will be."

I'd been meaning to link to this post about racism and underqualified TA's that I found via Erin O'Connor, but forgot. I think, beyond the obvious examples of mismanagement and administrative fear on display, that the post does an excellent job of pointing out the lack of training most TAs receive.

I had one semester of TA training, which covered everything from prepping a syllabus to grading, and involved two weeks of "classroom observation" in which I watched a TA teach the course I was preparing to teach. That was it. Then I was set loose upon 2 classes of 20 or so freshmen for the remaining semesters of my MA. I had the grammar skills and lit knowledge, but since the Eng 111 course revolved around writing argument; well, let's just say that I understand how the judgement of a 21 year old with a scant 15 weeks of training might not be sufficient to the job.

Welcome to higher education!

Got Nuthin'

Not an ounce of funny in me today. Nor yesterday, either. And the ranty mc rantitude is similarly petering out. I don't know if it's because there's so much to be annoyed at that I've shorted out my anger centers, or if it's a terminal case of SSDD, but there you have it. But here are a few items that managed to stir the venomous brew that is my dilapidated soul into a froth:

1. Paris Hilton, Would You Please Shut Up? No, please. I'm begging you. I did not care when you were poorly filmed in night vision having skanky malnourished sex with an extortionist. I did not care when you got a reality show. I did not care that you got a "screamer" role in a remake of a cheesy Vincent Price horror flick. And the words that I need to express my current depth of not caring about your stupid-ass announcement that you're de-friending Nicole Richie have not yet been invented, more's the pity. I would have enjoyed using those words. Loudly. In all caps and followed by fun profanity symbols. All I can say is that I hope whatever Nicole did to you involved scissors and boiling oil. Life is not a LiveJournal hissyfit, Miss Thang. Now put a sock in it. Love, America.

2. The pope? Catholic, with all of the "unpleasant" things that entails regarding personal responsibility and the fact that "Do Whatever The Hell You Want" and "Stop Oppressing Me, You Square" are not the eleventh and twelfth commandments. And also, read this.

3. Your official "I hate everyone and everything involved with education" article of the day is here.

Gah. I need a vacation.

Pets, Films and Food

Morning arrived early to the dulcet tones of a puking cat. Huzzah! Yet more laundry and carpet cleaning for me! Anyone want a cat? She's not much trouble, but her palate tends toward various species of wildlife, with colorful and predictible results for carpeting.

And take the dog, too. I tire of her truculence and incessant shedding. Oh, and the barking. And the occasional episodes of incontinence. And the ill-considered eating which leads to pancreatitis and $500 vet bills. And the incidents involving leftover deer parts getting dragged inside my house. But other than that, she's great!

When these two kick off, I will not have another pet for a Really Long Time.

But enough about my two tiny, furry, money pits. I'm sure you're just dying to know what our weekend was like!

1. Managed to observe not one, but two groups of baby praying mantises emerging from their egg sacks. Very cool.

2. Watched Sideways. Didn't have high hopes for a movie that prompted me to yell at the screen "I hope he gets hit by a bus!" within the first ten minutes, but it turned out to be very amusing. Painful, but amusing. And yeah, both characters could benefit from being run over by a Greyhound. There's also my personal squick about movies (and books) featuring struggling writers. Those characters always come off as overwrought and pretentious, and you are too often able to see the author's hand attempting to make them somehow "noble." At least there was none of that pesky pseudo-nobility in Sideways. Snarky worked much better.

3. Received (and actually enjoyed) the latest issue of the Oxford American. Seems like they kicked the hipster wannabes off of staff and are getting back to what made the magazine interesting; read, NOT trying to be the New Yorker South. Also, Best Letter Ever from a reader who calls Kaye Gibbons "an ass." Thank you, letter writer! And I am dying to eat some hot chicken--the issue is all about Southern Food, which prompted Hublet to say, "I want some good Southern food, but not the kind that's bad for me." My laughter was long and loud.

But seriously, I could go for some fried okra right now.

Lost Post

No, I didn't lose a post, I'm just posting about last night's Lost. I gotta give a big ol' HEART to a show that kills off characters I find irritating. If only Shannon had been with them...well, a girl can hope. Plus now we've got Crazy Locke of the One Kidney going all Kurtz in the jungle--good times coming, people! Of course, Avenger!Jack is going to annoy the piss out of me, sort of like he did last night. Seriously, dude. Here's a ladder. You can use it to step down off of the cross you're on.

But I love that I can't predict where the show is going. Unfortunately, the I've-been-burned-too-many-times-by-lazy-writers-who-write-themselves-into-a-corner-and-then-have-to-push-the-reset-button part of me still has moments of irrational fear that the final episode will involve Hurley waking up on his sofa and going, "Duuuuude! No more pizza before bedtime!"

Anyone got any good predictions?

Scenes from a small-town prom

Yes, Hublet and I spent an "Evening in Paris," and despite the titular similarity to a Paris Hilton porn video, escaped largely unscathed from a small town prom.

My first clue that the prom was small-town was that students were arriving BEFORE the prom actually started, at 8 p.m. This was due to two main factors: one, there are no restaurants above Golden Corral calibre in town, and two, the rich kids all leave for the beach after the king and queen are announced at 10 p.m., and so need to get their two hours of staring at each other in formal wear in early.

My second clue was the presence of random parents at the prom. Seriously. Non-chaperone parents, who just wanted to come and see their baby at the prom. Dear God. I would have self-immolated from the heat of my embarrassment had a parent attended my prom (actually, had I attended my prom to begin with, but whatever).

And then there was the music, an amalgam of country and rap that I shall henceforth refer to as "hick-hop." By the way, do ANY rap/r&b artists make records by themselves anymore? It was always, "Artist soandso, featuring artist blahblah." Oh, and Beyonce'? Take five, sweetie. Seriously. If your life goal was to be in every single video ever featured on BET, well--mission accomplished. Take your flowing locks of indeterminate color, your personal wind machine, your hot pants and your body glitter and head for the caribbean. Bye! And look into taking Jimmy Buffet and Alan Jackson with you. Please? Love, America.

Hublet pointed out the People Of Interest, by table: there was the Loser table, with the pregnant chick, the failing guy, the practically 30 year old who hadn't yet graduated, and assorted other folk, the Jocks, the Geeks, the Exceptional Children--all neatly self-segregated into the same cliques they hang out in during the week, except with shinier clothes. Which sort of begged the question, why bother? But mine is not to know the psychology of the teenager, so whatever.

But it is over, and neither I nor any of the attendees are dead, so I guess that's okay. Hublet has been politely requested to hide in the men's room when they make assignments to the prom committee next year.

You Were Wrong, Irene Cara

And here I thought I was going to live forever. Drat.

When In Doubt, Blame the Space Lasers

This week is shaping up to be from hell. Work is exploding in a fairly explodey way, my foot hurts, and I have to co-chaperone a freaking high school prom on Thursday night. Words cannot express my non-excitement at having to stand around in uncomfortable shoes for 4 hours, listening to crap music at high volume and averting my eyes from a bunch of dry-humping teenagers in ill-fitting formalwear. Geez. Whatever happened to "show up for 5 minutes, get picture made, adjourn to hotel for drunken all-nighter?" Yes, I can get behind that, primarily because I don't have a teenage daughter. And because my feet already hurt.

Just brace yourselves for a long-winded post-prom rant, is all I'm saying. My pre-prom rant is pretty damn long-winded, and I haven't even BEEN to the prom yet. Gah.

Anyway, came across this article via somewhere I don't remember--Fark? Who knows. It seems that Arafat was done in by--drumroll, please--Super Sekrit Lasers! To which I can only reply, "COOL! Where can I get one? And can I get a Super Sekrit Space Laser instead?"

Unfortunately, space lasers that can invisibly kill doddering despots don't exist. Which totally bums me out, because think of the applications--and I mean beyond the obvious, "Fry the guys you hate" ones. The existence of invisible destructo-beams from space could effectively absolve you of personal responsibility for anything! Overcooked steak? An errant beam must have struck it! Dead world leader? The next-door neighbor must have hacked the targeting beam! Car won't start? DAMN YOU, SPACE LASERS!

Well, never mind that the lasers don't actually exist. I can blame them anyway. I mean, if it worked for that Palestinian spokesman there's no reason it couldn't work for me.

Some Days, Less is More

After trying and failing to get The Boy to go to sleep before TEN O'CLOCK last night, I finally was able to adjourn to the den with some decaf and channel surf. Before I finally settled on some old Spider-Man cartoons, I was briefly stunned into immobility by a movie on the Sci-Fi channel titled, MANSQUITO. Yes, Mansquito, about a scientist who, in an attempt to find a cure for the West Nile virus, accidentally turns herself and her assistant into giant mosquitos.

I stared at the screen in dumbfounded amazement as the Mansquito in question brutally murdered a whole bunch of folks in the hospital in an attempt to spirit away some woman who I assume was the scientist--best part of the five minutes? Young guy bursts in on Mansquito, yells, "Get away from her!" in the typically leaden way bad young actors do, is stabbed by Mansquito's giant proboscis (nothing phallic to see here, folks), does a fake blood spit take, attempts to shoot Mansquito with a tiny, tiny gun, and accidentally blows a hole in his foot. Which the director makes a point of showing. Why? I mean, it was kinda funny, and I liked the dude's shoes, but the floppy haired actor was already dead, so...

Okay, I'm analyzing Mansquito. I'll stop.

In slightly more highbrow news, Hublet and I are off to Davidson to see the Royal Shakespeare Company do Two Gentlemen of Verona this weekend. I wish they'd done the Shakespeare in Residence stuff when I was there--Dr. Lewis, the resident Shakespearean, was my advisor, and I think I took every class and seminar she offered. As a professor she was fairly scary, but I learned more about scholarly writing from her than from anyone else I ever worked with--with the possible exception of my MA thesis advisor.

And now for something slightly useful. Given my somewhat (ahem) obsessive qualities concerning pop culture, I think I might really enjoy this book.

Not Irish. Not Catholic. Not Interested.

Plus it's snowing, I gave up alcohol for Lent and I've never been a fan of green beer anyway, leprechauns suck, clover holds bees that can end up squished between toes and fingers (voice of hard-won experience here), Lucky Charms cereal tastes like crap and I'm sleep deprived.

And so help me God, if one person tries to do the whole "you're not wearing green so I'm going to pinch you" thing to me--you'll draw back a nub. That's all I'm saying.

So, as I'm feeling particularly obstreperous today, here's an op-ed calling for the abolishment of tenure. I'm thinking such a move wouldn't necessarily change the face of the sciences that much--they're accustomed to continual cutthroat competition for research grants. But it might have a very interesting effect on the humanities.

Full disclosure: I would really enjoy sipping from my giant cup of schadenfreude while listening to humes folks squeal about the unfairness of having to actually justify their theoretical flights of fancy with, you know, "real" scholarship. Because I'm evil. But you knew that already, didn't you?

Update: I have now edited this post about 6 times. Perhaps I should add "illiterate" to "obstreperous" and "sleep deprived." Seriously, I can usually spell words like "schadenfreude" and I usually know the correct form of "abolish" to use in a sentence.

An Omen?

This weekend was a fast and furious one indeed, involving reptiles and the vague threat of salmonella, death-defying bicycle stunts by boob-obsessed toddlers (and no, he wasn't breastfed until he was three, so move on), and very poor nights sleeping. For some reason, my brain waits until AFTER the workday is finished to come up with line after line of brilliant prose constructions that I should have included in the day's work but that alas! I didn't. And then of course I fall asleep and forget everything and the cycle starts all over again.

Anyway, on to the ostensible point of this post. Sunday morning we were awakened by a tap, tap, tapping noise. It seemed to be coming from the front porch. I went down the hall to inspect the front door and was greeted by a male bluebird who seemed intent on killing the window next to the front door. When he saw me, the bird flew off, only to reappear a few moments later at the window to our guest room. Psycho bird.

Feeling jovial, I said something about the bluebird of happiness paying us a visit. Then I noticed that said bluebird had pooped all over the Boy's bike helmet. When the bluebird of happiness craps on your bike helmet it's got to be an omen, right?

Incidentally, wouldn't that be a great title for a book of whining, self-indulgent essays?

The Bluebird of Happiness Crapped on my Porch; or, I Don't Know What I Was Expecting, but This Sure Ain't it.

Not that I expect to be forthcoming with a bunch of whining essays anytime soon, but if I ever do...I've got a great title!

List

1. Got carried away with the Spam Killing. May have inadvertently bah-leeted or banned legit comments. Email me if you suddenly can't post--if you suddenly can't post Pr0N links, however, don't bother.

2. Went to Reptile and Amphibian day at Museum of Natural Science. Got to pet lots of reptiles, see the world's largest Alligator Snapping Turtle, and hold a corn snake. I've always wanted a pet corn snake. Hublet is rather opposed to the idea. Big fun. Lots of people. More hand sanitizer than you could shake a stick at--salmonella being the one large drawback to reptile ownership.

3. The Boy has discovered Wonder Woman. He really, really likes looking at Wonder Woman. He is also fascinated with being Batman, which means that everything is now a bat-arang. I see spackle in my future.

4. Watched Saw. A truly irritating movie. Note to Hollywood: pairing Marilyn Manson video-making cinematic technique with a pale script ripoff of Seven and adding more gore? Not enough to plug the plot holes, and not really entertainment. And also, Cary Elwes? Has let himself go. This is sad, because I don't want to see the Dread Pirate Roberts with a middle-aged paunch. I want my 91 minutes back, plus interest.

5. On the academic front, this is not at all surprising. What did we think would happen when we started privileging the provocative over solid scholarship? Whatever we thought, we should have known we'd end up with crap like this. At least I hope the guy is just cynically trading on the provocative. If he really believes what he's spewing...well, that's it for civilization, then.

Note to everyone: basing arguments on moral equivalence is not scholarship. 4-year olds can do moral equivalence. It's also like being 14 and suddenly realizing that OMG people can be hypocrites! Oooh, really? Welcome to reality and thank you for the oh-so-stunning revelation that your fellow man can suck. Here's the important but often overlooked by 4-year olds and adolescents addendum: just because you can suck doesn't mean you should. See also: just because everyone is doing it doesn't make it right. The fact that these things must be pointed out to the intelligentsia? Jesus wept, people.

UPDATE: Fixed dang link. Thanks, Michael!

I Hate to Say I Told You So

But I did! I did! And on more than one occasion (Okay, so the second time it was just an addendum to the first time, but still)!

Bumper stickers are Teh Eville!

So put that on the back of your mobile signpost and smoke it!

The Story that Launched 1,000 Bad Horror Novels

Is right here.

Money quote:

Controversial German artist Gunther von Hagens, known for his displays of preserved human corpses stripped of skin, wants to build a factory in Poland to mass-produce his art.

Fire up those keyboards, horror writer wannabes! Why do I keep flashing on Vincent Price in "House of Wax?" Or that super-cheesy 80's horror film, "Waxwork?" Yes, I did see it, and it has stayed with me. Move on.

My Only Oscar Comment

Dear Fashion Designers:

About those mermaid dresses--please stop. Every two years they appear, and every two years they suck. Unless your name is Ariel and you hang out with a talking jamaican crab, you have no business doing mermaid chic. So save us all some time and stop with the mermaid dresses. Please? My retinas are begging you.

Love,
Big Arm Woman

Karl Rove - Freaking Genius

Look, I was sceptical of the whole Rovian superpowers thing. But I can admit when I'm wrong. Karl Rove is a freaking evil genius. All he's lacking is the sharks with freaking laser beam helmets, seriously.

What, you still doubt? Doubt no longer, small padawans, for I bring you the ultimate proof:

Author Regrets Secretly Taping Bush Talks

Do you see? The man releases "scandalous" tapes that only enhance Bush's image, the White House gets all "hurt and betrayed," while reaping the benefits of this "scandal," and then the fellow recants and vows to donate proceeds to charity:

But he said he canceled plans to be on "Hardball" on MSNBC Tuesday night to talk about his regrets because "it would only add to the distraction I have caused to the president's important and historic work."

"Contrary to a statement that I made to the New York Times, I have come to realize that personal relationships are more important than history," Wead wrote in a letter to the show's host, Chris Matthews, that MSNBC released to the public on Wednesday. "I am asking my attorney to direct any future proceeds from the book to charity and to find the best way to vet these tapes and get them back to the president to whom they belong. History can wait."

Connect the dots, people. Connect. The. Dots. At this rate, Bush will be nominated for sainthood and Rove will rule the world! Well, he already rules the world, so I guess I should just say he'll rule it longer, or rule it more, or, or, well, he'll be all Rove-happy or something. But you can bet it'll be evil!

Woah. I can only hope to someday attain this level of strategery. And evil!

Happy Tuesday!

And happy reading. After an evening spent with a Boy who ate his weight in foodstuffs (including a chicken breast, 8 large broccolis, mashed potatoes, 2 chicken nuggets--on a plate with ketchup!--some animal cookies, a banana and 2 full glasses of milk) and got massive indegestion, my creative juices are at a somewhat low ebb.

So here are other folks doing a great job of posting about the topics I would be posting about if I were posting. Oh, and to those of you who sent me links recently--thanks a ton! Sorry I've not been able to write about what you sent, but don't think I don't appreciate it, 'cause I do. Good reading there.

Now on to the linky-dinky-dos.

Curious about how the Ward Churchills of the world get hired in the first place, with little-to-no attention paid to things like, oh, actual credentials? Here's a nice account of academic reality that pretty much mirrors what I know of the process.

Speaking of horses' asses, here's exactly the eulogy I would have written for Hunter S. Thompson, were I drunk and Californian. I used to use both Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test in my Freshman Comp classes, to demonstrate that informative writing could take many colorful forms. But I never idolized Thompson, because I've never appreciated the allure of violent, depressed, drunk and drug-addled writers, I guess. Explains why I'm no big fan of Hemingway, either.

Arguments for home-schooling? You betcha!
And finally, remember the Tard Blog, a blog by special ed teachers about their charges? There's a new teacher on the block, and a companion blog, Slow Children at Play, that will certainly increase your appreciation for the folks who really work in the trenches. I couldn't do their jobs, that's for damn sure.

UPDATE: Links work now--sorry!

How to Tell if Your Parents Are Depression Babies

Me: Hello?

(Tinny Voice): Hey hon, it's mom.

(Other Tinny Voice): And dad.

Me: Where are you?

(Tinny Voices): Can you hear us okay?

Me: You sound like you're calling from inside a toilet bowl.

Mom: We're in the car.

Me: I figured. You only both talk at once when you're using the OnStar. Where are you going?

Mom: We aren't going anywhere.

Me: Where are you?

Mom: In the garage.

Me: At home?

Dad: Yep.

Me: You are both sitting inside the Buick in the garage calling me on the OnStar.

Mom: Well, we had a few minutes left over and they were just going to expire and they were expensive.

Me: Ah. Do you want me to send you five dollars so you don't have to do weird stuff like call from the car in the garage or call while squished into the doorjamb of the front door because that's the only place in the house that gets decent cell phone reception? 'Cause, you know, I can spare a few bucks.

Dad: No, we just don't want to waste the money. The car is very comfortable.

Me: You guys just get weirder as you get older, you know that, right?

Mom: That's our perogative, dear. Can we speak to our grandson now?

Scattered Thoughts and Musings

Went to see Hide and Seek this Friday. You know that movie, Secret Window, with Johnny Depp? Have you seen it? Then you've seen Hide and Seek. Seriously. They are the EXACT SAME MOVIE, even down to the good old fashioned "hit 'em with a shovel" method of removing the plot obstacle. And you don't even get the cold comfort of Depp cheekbones to make up for the blatant rip-off, either.

Netflixed Friday Night Lights and Resident Evil: Apocalypse. Guess which one Hublet watched with me and which one I watched alone? Friday Night Lights was good, but it's weird seeing Lucas Black as a high schooler. I'm still in Sling Blade mode with him. Resident Evil was refreshing, in that "I'm literally watching the movie of the video game, right down to the cut scenes" kind of Mortal Kombat I way. Stuff blew up real good, and people died horribly at a respectably brisk clip. A nice capper to a too-short weekend.

After following a vehicle that was so thoroughly covered with those stick-on "cause" ribbons that its paint job was completely obscured, I came to a realization: I am sick to death of ribbons: red ribbons for AIDS or heart disease, yellow for troops, weird star-spangled ones for God knows what, pink ones for breast cancer--seriously, people. Do we need to have stupid pieces of fabric pinned to our chests or stuck to our cars before we can officially be supporters of a cause? Plus there are so many now I have no idea what they even mean. Perhaps I shall begin sporting a ribbon in tartan, and when folks ask me what cause I support I'll just answer, "Oh, just freaking PICK ONE!"

And speaking of stupid pieces of fabric, I am over the politics/pubic area thing completely. Yes, our president's last name is Bush. And yes, we have a senator named Boxer. Do I have to point out that the attendant jokes are, how do I put this--beyond puerile, stupid, jejune and gauche? (Yes, I could probably use some more French there, but I made my point). Or that no one takes you seriously if you sport underwear with your favorite politician or your "fighting of the power" consists primarily of twat references? My grandmother would have been out there pimp-slapping some people for that sort of behavior, and I would have proudly held her cane while she did it.

No, I haven't fixed the comments. No, I don't have time right now. Them's the breaks.

Thursday Night Hoops

Last night was the big faculty/student basketball game at Hublet's high school. I am pleased to report that Hublet is alive and fairly mobile today. Of course, they say that Day 2 is the worst day for recovery, so we'll see how mobile he is tomorrow.

After a mammoth battle, which got noticeably slower on hublet's side after the first half, the faculty were victorious, 49-41!

As you may imagine, the sixteen year olds were a bit put out at being beaten by a bunch of "old men," and so the hacking was especially fierce. For those of you keeping track, here are "The Road Warrior" Hublet's stats:

10 points
3 assists
5 rebounds
50% from the free throw line

and the bonuses:

a fat lip
a deep tissue bruise to the elbow
a blister-covered foot
various abrasions
affirmation of status as "middle-aged."

The best part? The Boy screaming, "Is Daddy beating his students?" from the front row of the bleachers.

Hump Day--One Day Late. Story of My Life.

What. a. week.

Highlights include:

1. Watching Tennessee Governor Bredesen tell a whiny twenty-something who was complaining that he didn't have health insurance that he "looked eminently employable," and that he should therefore get a job, get coverage, and quit trying to suck resources away from the elderly and poor (this got applause, by the way, and the whiner actually POUTED as he sat down).
2. Listening to a crazy woman rant about Tenn Care (Bredesen's state health care program) and trying to prevent her from disrupting a press conference. Note to crazy people everywhere--if you want to actually be heard, you might want to look into not being, you know, INSANE, and lying about being a) with the governor (sure, if I were a politician, I'd keep folks who were protesting my positions on my payroll...) or b) with CBS news. Holy Cow. Governor Bredesen actually spoke with her one on one later, but let's just say there were a lot of security folks nearby.
3. Being randomly accosted by a former governor (Jim Hunt) who wanted to know why there was no Pepsi on the catering table at 9:30 in the morning, and watching a colleague sprint to obtain said frosty beverage.
4. Listening to Tommy Thompson talk about preventative health care, slap around some reporters who were trying--very clumsily--to start a fight between him and the Bush Administration, and extol the virtues of pedometers.
5. Having all of these things occur whilst being hopped up on DayQuil.

So my apologies for the lack o' posts. And no, I still haven't upgraded the blog to fix the comments. DayQuil. NyQuil. Need I say more?

In other news, Hublet will be playing in the faculty vs students basketball game at his high school today. My only advice to him: "Don't die." This isn't necessarily a sure thing.

And for those of you who are following these things, the cover of this month's Atlantic features Actual Human Remains. I'm thinking of sending the entire staff a gross of Wellbutrin.

And on the Eighth Day

God created the Island of Sodor. Imagine my surprise. The Boy had whipped out his Toddler's Illustrated Bible, complete with highly sanitized Old Testament (nothin' like the OT for some serious blood, gore and intrigue, but the kiddie version glosses over unpleasant facts about the patriarchs, such as who was a murderer, adulterer, etc), and was looking at the simplistic cartoony drawings of Genesis.

"Look! There's Thomas!" The Boy pointed at an illustration of some random biblical city. "And Sodor!" He pointed at an illustration of Adam, naughty bits tastefully obscured by blobs of green foliage. Hublet and I exchanged a glance. "Well," said Hublet, "Now we know what God was up to on that mysterious Day Eight."

And frankly, Sodor is remarkably free of the type of shenanigans that got the earth in trouble with God. Sir Topham Hatt hasn't ever orchestrated the murder of an engineer in order to sleep with his wife, no one seems interested in golden calves, and trains don't eat fruit. As earthly paradises go, we could do a lot worse than an island inhabited by a bunch of anthropomorphic steam engines.

NOTE: Still haven't fixed comments. Email is bigarm at doorstopkitty dot com.

Beer Can Save Your Life

Never, ever let anyone tell you differently. I tend to forego mixed drink cocktails when out and about in favor of the humble beer, and now I am heartened to discover that not only can beer build your bones, in the event of an avalanche it can provide you a means of escape.

Oh, sure, you'd have liver and kidney damage, but you sure wouldn't feel the cold!

All hail the humble hop!

Damn You, John Cusak!

I was all prepared to write a searingly insightful blog entry today, but ended up getting one of the worst night's sleep EVER.

Why?

Because I had this dream where I was a stagehand for Saturday Night Live, and John Cusak was hosting. Normally, this would be very cool, as I have been a Cusak fan since 16 Candles. However, for some bizarre reason the dream-Cusak had decided that he would only host SNL if he were naked.

As you may imagine, this caused a dilemma for yours truly, the only stagehand available. I spent the entirety of the dream pushing desks, sofas, chairs and other handy pieces of furniture in front of the naked Cusak's naughty bits. And I woke up as exhausted as though I actually HAD been performing FCC-mandated physical labor.

Damn you, John Cusak, naked SNL host of Dooooooommmmm!

Priceless

Pursuant to the last entry, our local TV station has set up an open forum, roughly titled, "HEY! Traffic sucked! Whose fault is it?"

In 24 pages of responses, we've managed to refight the entire Civil War, be lectured about the tsunami, blame everyone from God to the DOT, get angry that anyone would MENTION God or the DOT, finger point, name call, type in angry all caps, and generally devolve into a flamewar that would have made the old Usenet forums blush.

If you've got a few spare minutes, skim that sucker. Good times, people. Good times.

Related note: Worst intro to a news report EVER, "Well, our fountain (outside the TV station--background for a live shot) is flowing the way traffic didn't yesterday evening!"

Dear God. Metaphor and Similie have given up and gone home for the week.

What I Have Learned About the French Revolution

From watching the first hour of The History Channel's special on the same subject:

1. Bad Kings eat a lot, because Eating = Evil. But not the really EVIL kind of evil, more just the ineffectual stupid kind of evil.

2. Bad Queens smirk a lot over their shoulders, because Smirking = Self-Absorbed.

3. If you want to foment revolution and change the world, the best way to do it is by standing on a table and pointing skyward. Oh, and by wearing glasses.

4. Note to armies everywhere: If you know the populace is starving, and rioting in the streets for bread, you MIGHT want to, you know, put extra locks and guards on the munitions supply house. Just a suggestion.

5. The worst job in the world? Personal guard for Louis XVI at Versailles.

6. Second worst job in the world? Personal guard for Louis XVI in Paris.

7. Runner-up for worst job in the world? Head jailer at the Bastille.

8. Note to victims of mob violence--asking them to let you die won't necessarily end your suffering much faster. It will result in your death, however, which might be a plus, but you should really weigh that against the manner in which you will be killed. If you don't mind being eviscerated by a bunch of screaming fishwives and bayonette-toting locals, then go right ahead and ask for death. If you were hoping for a bullet to the skull, you might want to hold off on the request.

9. The best way to convince the audience that you're a Serious Scholar of French History is by pronouncing french names with a "proper french accent," even though you're originally from Hoboken and your only major publication is entitiled In Defense of Marxism.

10. The guillotine was invented by a doctor. A big, crazy-eyed doctor! Because you have to be insane to invent the guillotine, you see. CRAZY!

I can't wait to find out what else I shall learn about the French Revolution tonight!

Tuesday

Comments are back - thanks AOG! Of course, now spammers can send comments again, but oh well.

Thanks to everyone who emailed me with boxer links. I have a pair on the way from OshKosh. Dang, boxers are expensive. So I only ordered the one pair.

The weekend was uneventful, except for The Boy's yelling, "Look at that BIG MAN!" at the Children's Symphony on Saturday as the conductor (a fairly stout black gentleman) took the stage. This wouldn't have been nearly as embarrassing had we not been on the SECOND ROW. Yes, the tiny Aryan boy just called you fat. My apologies. Please excuse me as I shut my eyes and will the floor to open up and swallow me whole.

Watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and then Dodgeball this weekend. Couple of notes: I like Jim Carrey when the director hog-ties and muzzles him--he can actually act when that happens. Also, Elijah Wood does creepy very well. And his high-pitched giggle? Oh, good Lord.

And Rip Torn is my favorite actor ever. Best lines from Dodgeball:

"You're about as useful as a poopy-flovored lollipop!"

and

"You look like a bunch of retards trying to hump a doorknob!"

Only Rip Torn could pull those off.

Disclosure

Ahem. I would like to state for the record that NO ONE pays me to blog. No one. Heck, I don't even do the tip jar, and not because I'm just too lazy to cut and paste some code. Although the lazy, it does factor in.

Let me pause for a moment to bask in the aura of sanctimony and self-satisfaction.

Ahhhh.

Now that that's over with, I'd just like to add that if someone WANTED to pay me to blog, well, you know where the email address is!

See, I'm not one of those people who get all indignant and yell "sellout" while secretly being pissed that they weren't offered the opportunity to sell out. If the price and the cause were right--oh hell yeah, I'd sell out. Have you seen tuition costs lately?

But I'd tell you all if I did. And that's a BAW guarantee. It's apparently not as obvious to everyone that disclosure is the right thing to do as it should be.

This disclosure brought to you by the latest Innerweb kerfuffle.

No, It's Not You

Comments are screwy. Looks like Blacklist has exploded. Although on the plus side I no longer have any comment spam...

If you need to contact yours truly, just use the address down there on the right hand side of the page.

Sigh.

Story Time

At bedtime, I have taken to spending about 15 minutes lying down with The Boy, chatting about the day or telling Boy Stories. Conversations go something like this:

Me: What are you thinking about?

Boy: (furrowing brow) Ummm. Dat fan.

Me: The ceiling fan?

Boy: And bricks. And trains. And Snow Percy and Chocolate Percy and Dirty Percy can't fly 'cause they don't have wings.

Me: You're right.

Boy: Tell me a The Boy (note: The Boy always refers to himself in the Professional Athlete Third Person in these stories) story.

Me: Which one? (This is his opportunity to make up the story he wants me to "tell" him)

Boy: The one about The Boy and the red and blue chairs. And they have faces and eyes and noses! And they're MEEEAAANNNN (scrunches up face in mean expression)! And they're high up in the trees and The Boy is crying. And mommy and daddy are crying. And Keat is nice and Gertie is nice and Gertie doesn't bark. And then they throw The Boy in the jail!

Me: The mean red and blue chairs with faces throw you in the jail?

Boy: YEAH! (getting really animated) And then mommy and daddy come and mommy has to fight the mean chairs and everyone cheers for mommy!

Me: (Secretly very pleased with my role as Xena Warrior Mommy in this particular tale) Do I hit them?

Boy: YEAH! And mommy kicks the chairs and hits them and throws them in the sky! And beats up those mean chairs and they cry!

Me: Okay. Once upon a time there was a little boy named The Boy, and he was very brave and handsome and strong...(insert soap operatic story about evil plotting anthropomorphic chairs kidnapping The Boy and imprisoning him for reasons of revenge, complete with Lassie-like canine companion animal action and giant fight scene featuring yours truly kicking some chair ass!).

Boy: Tell me another The Boy story!

Me: We'll do another one tomorrow night. Go ahead and think about what you want it to be tonight and let me know tomorrow.

Boy: Okay...Thomas comes and there's Edward and Toby on the track and oh no! They're on the same track! And James! And there's a BIG CRASH!

Me: Goodnight, sweetie.

Boy: And Edward only wanted to help and now everyone's off the track and...

I leave him still busy creating imaginary carnage on the Island of Sodor. And wonder where the hell that part with the chairs came from.

Oh Look! Another Opinion on CBS!

Do try to stifle your excitement.

Okay, so I read the report, which I admit held a bit of prurient interest for me. I'm not gonna bother with the whole "whitewash/greywash/great unwashed" debate. Instead, I shall pose a question concerning Heyward's not being fired.

As I said, I read the report, including the emails and memos Heyward sent. He did indeed keep making the point that they needed hard facts, corroboration, etc. But here's my question:

If you're a supervisor who is apparently ignored at every turn by your staff, are you actually effective at your job? And are you the kind of person who should be in charge of, well, anyone?

I'm thinking no. But that's just based on six years of experience in a giant state bureaucracy, so nevermind...

Call for Computer Advice

So it's tax time again, and Hublet and I have attempted to swing it so that this year we'll get enough of a refund to fund a new home computer.

Of course, nothing is ever simple in the land of computer choice, and particularly now that I have been sucked into the Cult Of Pod. But here's the thing:

I need to decide whether a laptop or a desktop is better for me--I'm leaning toward laptop for space and convenience, and I don't really game on the PC much anymore, but...eh. Plus, I'm now torn between Mac and PC. And here's where it gets a bit annoying, because it seems nigh impossible to get objective comparisons. I mean, the newbie perception of Mac-ville is "Scary Cult People--eeeek!" and I don't know that I need a lot of bells and whistles, or the ability to sync every electronic device in the world with my computer.

Anyone on either side know of some good FACTUAL comparisons of laptops, without proselytizing on either side? Recs welcome. I am a simple girl, with simple needs.

Thursday. No Clever Title.

Let me just get a few things out of the way:

1. Nothing, but NOTHING makes me more homicidal than bottom-feeding mouth breathers from the seventh level of hell who prey upon children. ESPECIALLY children who have just survived a tsunami. And since I have more than a passing knowledge of ancient torture methods and a bit of free time, I have designed a method for dispatching said soulless cretins that should prove extremely satisfying to me.

As you may be enjoying a meal while reading this I will refrain from relating the details of their punishment, but let's just say it involves molten lead, a rusted spike approximately 7 inches long (with a handle), an iron neck collar with serrated edges, fire, salt, 3 very hungry rats, a scalpel and suture kit, long bamboo strips, boiling oil, and a fairly dull hatchet. Car batteries are optional, and frankly, not even necessary once you get to the rats and oil. Imagine what you will.

Rant brought on by Emily.

2. South Carolina drivers are without a doubt the WORST in the country. And I have driven coast to coast, so I know whereof I speak. Yes, worse even than the ancient Floridiots who insist upon driving their 25 year old Buicks up twisting mountain roads at approximately 5 m.p.h. If there's a problem on the highway, you can bet it'll be traced to someone with that damn palm tree on their license plate. Arg.

3. Lost is back! Huzzah! Romance is in the air for Sayid, I think, which could mean that whatsherface is doomed, doomed, doomed. Perhaps they will kill off all the blondes on the island, which means Kate is safe. And I actually liked Sawyer in this episode. Liked him more than Jack, Mr. "I'm gonna be all noble and tell you that your past is your business and doesn't matter until I decide I want to know all about it and you won't tell me and then I'm gonna be all hurt and self-righteous" guy, anyway. I'm also waiting for Locke to go on that killing spree, or turn all Rambo and save the island or else turn into Kurtz from Apocalypse Now--he's already got the scarred bald thing working. And is it just me, or have any of you noticed that on television it's only okay for black people to be unironically religious? 'Cause if white folks are religious on tv shows like this one they're either pedophiles or David Koresh. An odd bit of typecasting, and I shall squelch the Inner English Major right now before I go off on some post-Orientalism rant about the dark-skinned Other being either angel or devil, but never human. Damn. Too late.

Here at the End of All Things

Like many of you, I have a weird love/hate relationship with all these end of year retrospective/prediction shows and articles. They annoy, yet I cannot seem to stop myself from reading or watching. I am weak. Weak, I say!

And this weakness precludes my making a list of resolutions, since that implies a to-do list and weak folk such as myself simply cannot muster the energy to accomplish much. So my entry for the end of the year will be a list of Things I Will Not Do in 2005, where a lack of real effort will help me feel accomplished. Go, me!
So without further ado, here is the official Big Arm Woman List of Things NOT to Do in '05:

1. I will not make a night-vision sex tape and distribute it over the internet.
2. On a related note, my mammaries will not make any unscheduled appearances at events covered by national media. You're very welcome.
3. I will not join an activist group of less than 7 people and publicly express the hope that my doing so will somehow remake reality.
4. I will not eat falafel. Thanks, O'Reilly.
5. I will try my damndest to avoid reading about or listening to celebrities weighing in about any topic other than entertainment. You're welcome, blood pressure,
6. I will not partake of any food prepared by friends of Vladimir Putin during an election cycle.
7. I will not give money or attention to anything having to do with the NBA, their valiant struggles to feed themselves on less than $20 million notwithstanding.
8. I will not star in a reality TV show.
9. I will not routinely stay up too late in order to view the ending of a David Spade or other ex-SNL cast member vehicle. Yes, this is a problem for me. No, I don't know why either. I said I was weak, okay? And Joe Dirt had Christopher Walken in it...and I can't NOT watch Chris Walken...and--can we just move along, now, please? Thanks.
10. Finally, I will not succumb to the urge to don sackcloth and ashes now that the extended version of Return of the King is out and my four-year infusion of new LoTR footage has finally ended.

Charity Stuff

If, like me, you're wondering how or where to give to the tsunami victims, and you want the lowdown on exactly how much of your money will go to the folks it's supposed to help, Charity Navigator gives you all the info you need.

So, if you give, you can be sure you're giving wisely.

Back in the Saddle

Well, sort of. See, there was travelling. And then there was cleaning. Baseboards. With Clorox Clean-up spray and a toothbrush, because I have these weird hyper-cleaning frenzies that usually occur in conjunction with family get-togethers. Then there was cooking. And wrapping. And family. And leaving two cookies and a glass of iced tea on the front porch for Santa (The Boy hasn't grokked the whole "he comes INSIDE the house" thing yet), and Christmas morning. And Power Thomas. And the catapult (coolest toy ever--even has a counterweight for hurling those tiny rocks at the castle). And opening presents. And eating. And cooking. And more eating. And then snow. And sledding. And stir-craziness. And shopping. And staying up way too late watching all the extra footage in Return of the King. And red wine.

So I'm back. And kind of relieved about it, frankly.

Santa's Boots are Big and Black for a Reason

This Christmas is the first one where The Boy has really started to get the whole Santa concept. Naturally, he's excited and so are we. As part of our giant pre-Christmas North and South Carolina travelling relative-palooza, we will be riding the Polar Express up in Dillsboro. In preparation, we've been reading the story to The Boy and listening to Liam Neeson's lilting Irish narration on the CD that was included in our version of the book. So every evening we sit in our cozy den, enveloped in the magical cocoon of childhood fantasy.

Except when one of our Inner English Majors makes an appearance, as Hublet's did last night. I was whipping up some chili in the slow cooker, and Hublet and The Boy were doing The Polar Express when I heard:

Hublet: ...factories where all the toys were made. Belching thick black smoke that polluted the atmosphere and created the greenhouse effect.

Me: Uh, dear?

Hublet: Those elves are sweatshop labor. Santa's a capitalist exploiter, that's what he is!

Me: Dear...

Hublet: Then Santa appeared! Look at these illustrations--it's like some pro-fascist propaganda poster! The adoring throngs, the larger-than-life Santa...

Me: Do you want me to read the book tonight?

Hublet: Oh, and the elves all let out a roaring cheer. Heil Santa!

Me: DEAR!

Hublet: I'm just saying it's a little creepy, that's all.

Me: Yes, but perhaps we could spare The Boy the whole Triumph of the Will aspect of The Polar Express, okay? He's THREE.

The Boy: We get to ride the Polar Express!

Me and Hublet: Yes, we do.

The Boy: And then Santa will bring me a Power Thomas and a new bike!

Hublet: Made in a sweatshop by elves crushed under the jackboot of fascism.

Me: Stop it.

The Boy: I want to play with trains now.

So, no obvious mental scarring thus far. I can't say the same for me or for Hublet, however.

Look! Below Rock Bottom! A Lower Place!

You know the one thing lamer than a plagiarist?

An anarchist. And the one thing even lamer than an anarchist? A SOUTHERN anarchist. Because while a sort of laissez-faire, apolitical, pseudo-anarchy is part and parcel of the southern character (think moonshiners), organized anarchists who spout off with stuff like:

Yet anarchist Steve Roberts, 22, of Winston-Salem, who says he did not take part in the protest, says the destruction of property pales next to the destruction of the human spirit by the political structure. "You can't change the system from within, because the problem is systemic."

Are, frankly, an embarrassment to the region. Not to mention overwrought. Oh, and wrong. Let's see how that whole "fighting the power" thing has worked out for our homegrown anarchists, shall we?

The vandalism occurred after about 200 protesters marched down Hillsborough Street just before midnight. Police arrived to find about 20 people in black clothes attacking the GOP building.

Vanessa Zuloaga, 24, Melissa Brown, 18, and David Hensley, 20, all of Columbia, S.C., were jailed on $50,000 bail each. Supporters across the country contributed more than $15,000 over the Internet to bail out "the Raleigh 3," and they have been released. They are scheduled for a court hearing Monday.

Here's my question--if you're an anarchist, you eschew the capitalist system, and, like, money and stuff, right? So how do you explain the internet fundraising campaign? It just seems so, so, bourgeois! And is ANYONE surprised that Indymedia was involved? Me neither.

And because we live in an area surrounded by institutes of higher learning, we can't just get over the fact that a bunch of pissed-off ex-goths wanted to get drunk and do some property damage; no, we have to have a freaking panel discussion on What It All Means!

So what does anarchy mean? Well, as it's ANARCHY, it tends to mean whatever the anarchist being interviewed at the time SAYS it means. Pretty neat, that. Naturally, this being an academic-sponsored panel, no one was going to be so tacky as to, you know, form a judgement concerning the appropriateness of vandalism. Dude, keep your artificially constructed, like, limits, off me, man!

We do have this fun quote:

"Just like any social movement, it's multifaceted," McPherson said. "You can't characterize it by one event."

She said maybe the best definition of anarchism is believing in living -- or trying to live -- a nonhierarchical, nonauthoritative and noncorporate way of life.

Yes, because nothing says Fuck Whitey like refusing to buy that Tootsie Roll.

Sounds of the Season

Well, it's been quite a week. I do apologize for the lack o' content, but things are settling in now, so life is back to normal--or at least as normal as it gets for me.

I've noticed a shocking dearth of Christmas Cheer around these parts, and so I will now do my part to remedy that situation by bringing you my own special Christmas Album!

Yes, straight from the heartland of Johnston County, it's a Big Arm Christmas, featuring such never-before heard favorites as:

Walking in a NASCAR Wonderland

It's Beginning to Smell a lot Like Deer Parts

Deck the Halls with Toddler Tantrums

The Twelve Disasters of Christmas

Frosty the Six Foot Inflatable Yard Art

I Saw Mommy Decking Santa Claus (over the Christmas Credit Card Bill)

And the original hit, "Screw you, Martha Stewart! I LIKE Canned Cranberry Sauce!"

Well I do, damn my unsophisticated palate.

Sweeps Are Over--It's Reruns!

Look--things are out of control right now with the job transitioning and the shopping and the whole hoo-ha, so for your amusement here are a couple of holiday-themed reruns. Yes, I am lame, but I do this for free, people, so suck it up.

And so, behind the cut, you will find treatises on why Target is my Favorite. Store. Ever. and how NOT to decorate for Christmas.

Mayhap tomorrow I will have time for something original.

Oooooh! Shiny!

I've just gotta get this off my chest: I HEART Target. Why? Mainly because it's shiny. Rows upon rows of glorious consumer items, all arranged tastefully for your perusal. Bright lighting that reflects off of the polished shiny floor tiling, big bright signs adorned with smiling faces and colorful critters, and the aromatic scent of popcorn (unlike our local Wal-Mart or K-Mart, which always smell dishearteningly like fertilizer. I've gotta have a favorable nasal impression of a store, or I can't go there.). I can't even be ironic or sarcastic about this, except to say that Target's marketing department knows my demographic, and that I feel more than a little like a crow or a raven when I'm there, seduced and distracted by the shiny.

This time of year I find the siren song of the big red circle impossible to resist, because Target ratchets the shiny up about a million notches with the addition of: the Christmas section! Woo-hoo! The big corral of fake trees, all sparkly with their lights, whole kiosks devoted to baubles and doo-dads to clutter up the home, elegant gift bags, ribbons and matching tags and wrapping paper, for that coordinated under the tree look, and all conveniently located right next to the toy and electronics aisles. Wheee! I stand amongst the surfeit of shiny, inhaling the scent of popcorn and fantasizing about how this Christmas my home will be beautifully appointed, and the husband and I will smile and joke over our mulled wine whilst I effortlessly produce hand decorated gingerbread men for my darling rosy-cheeked toddler. The fantasy even includes my festive holiday apron--the one with the Shakespeare quote in gold (which I have never yet remembered to wear while making Christmas cookies).

Needless to say, my reality is somewhat different. The house is currently in that half-decorated, mostly filthy state, and I've given up trying to get EVERY SINGLE SURFACE disinfected for the guests before decorating--the rosy-cheeked toddler spends his time pulling stuff down, breaking other stuff, and crying when his father tries to stop/distract/remove him. Dinner is eaten in shifts because we cannot currently locate the kitchen table under the gifts that need wrapping and the cards that need mailing and the day's mail and paper and various other items we are trying to keep away from the small destructive one. The Great Shiny Shrubbery Project is in disarray because we only have about 15 minutes of daylight to work in when we get home and I discovered yesterday that a) I've hooked up the plugs backward and must now undo and redo them all and b) you can only run 4 shrubs per plug or the fuse blows. I'm tired and grumpy--and oh yeah, poor--and the only one really enjoying himself right now is the toddler.

Still, I see the light at the end of the tunnel. We've got lots of fun stuff planned, we've cut the travelling to the bare minimum to make it easier on ourselves, and if I can just get through this week, maybe the fantasy of mulled wine and gingerbread can be a reality. And in the meantime, there's always Target.

****************************************

Red Rum. Reeeeddddd Ruuuuummmm!

When it comes to Christmas decorations, I'm a lowest common denominator kinda gal. If it lights up and/or is shiny or tacky or plastic--great! I'm not gonna strap eight tiny flashing reindeer and a glowing Santa to my roof, but I'll enjoy your home if you have. Wanna incorporate Frosty and Rudolf in your front yard nativity scene, gazing adoringly with vacant cartoon eyes at the baby Jesus? Fabulous! I'll slow down to appreciate the view, chuckle, and move on. Mix your media, mix your messages, plug it in and/or inflate it, and I'll take the long circuitous route home just to be able to tell folks what I saw on my drive.

However, there is one decorating element that does not fill me with Christmasy joie de vivre--red lights. I'm not talking about the bulb on your mechanical Rudolf's nose, either, or the occasional strand mixed in with all the other stuff. I mean the homes that do all of the window candles and trim in red. I know that red is supposed to convey the warmth of a cozy hearth, that it's one of the two main Christmas colors, etc., but I'm sorry, it just doesn't work that way when used on a large scale. It looks like your house has channeled the spirit of the Overlook Hotel, and frankly, it frightens me. Not from a "how gauche" perspective, but from an "AAACCK! Hell on earth! Axe murderers!" perspective.

My horror of the red stems from my fifth grade year, when for some light Christmas reading I picked up The Amityville Horror, and scared myself into a fugue state with it. The most lasting image from that book was the glowing red pig eyes that appeared in the windows of the home. After reading that book, every time I saw a lightbulb reflected in a window pane, I jumped, and it was in this heightened state of fear that my mom took me with her to visit a friend, who had incidentally done all of her window lights in red. I spent two hours convinced that I was surrounded by pig demons, and have never fully recovered from the trauma. To this day, houses bathed in the all over glow of red chill my heart.

So if you want to make your home into the Eye of Sauron for the holiday season, feel free, but don't be surprised if I give your expression of holiday cheer a pass.

Of Jobs, Abbott and Costello, and Deck-ing Up the House

I've been remiss in my postings of late, and there are many, many reasons, the first being an impending job change (a good thing!) the reasons behind the job change (a bad thing!) and the fact that when you work at a state funded university, everything that can go wrong in such a situation will go wrong (an ulcer-inducing, Thanksgiving spoiling, snatching employment from the jaws of un- thing!). More details on this stuff forthcoming...

And now onto The Boy!

For some strange reason, The Boy has substituted "how" for the ubiquitous three-year-old "why" as a response to every. single. statement. we. make. We've been trying to explain that the question he wants to ask is "why," but he's not getting that yet, which leads to conversations like this one:

BAW: We've got to put all the empty decoration boxes back in the storage container.

Boy: How?

BAW: No, you mean "why."

Boy: Why?

BAW: Right. You say "why" when you want to know how come something is done a certain way--wait. No. When you want to know why something has to be the way it is.

Boy: How?

BAW: No, why. You ask "how" when you want to know how something gets done.

Boy: How I say why?

BAW: You mean why you need to say why?

Boy: How?

BAW: Wait. You say...oh, forget it. Put those boxes back, sweetie.

Boy: How?

BAW: ...

The good news is that The Boy is enthusiastically "decking up the house." The bad news is that he has his own ideas of what constitutes "stylish"--his all-purpose word for acceptable fashion and home decor. Our tree has been festooned with manger animals, outlet covers and stray bits of shiny things, all of which are produced "very stylish."

It's shaping up to be a very interesting Christmas, indeed.

And on the Last Day of November

My hell mutt gave to me...

Wait. Let me start this story from the beginning. As you know, I have been blessed with the most murderous cat in Christendom and a dog who might best be described as completely useless and from hell.

Okay. Everyone up to date so far? Well, yesterday I arrived home, looking forward to a relaxing evening (The Boy is spending a few days with my folks--when I asked him if he was excited about coming home today he actually pitched a tantrum, screaming "Noooooooo! I DON'T WANNA!!" and running from the phone. If I were a lesser person I would question my parenting skills...) so the odds of the evening being relaxing were in my favor.

Until I got into our bedroom and noticed some odd animal hair on the floor. My first thought was that the dog had suffered an anxiety attack and self-mutilated, so I dragged her out from under the bed and examined her thoroughly. Nope. No bald spots.

Next I retrieved the cat and examined her for signs of abuse at the hands (or paws) of the dog. Nope. No trauma.

So I looked more closely at the hair. It matched neither of my pets in color or texture. My immediate next thought was that the cat had killed a rabbit inside, but there was no other physical evidence. Ooookay, maybe she had killed the rabbit outside and regurgitated the remains...but that didn't fit, either.

So still puzzled, I went to get the vacuum cleaner to clean up--it was just a little bit of hair, after all. I retrieved the vacuum, wheeled it into the bedroom, and leaned down to the outlet located behind our computer, only to discover...

A DEER LEG. BEHIND THE COMPUTER. A GNAWED ON DEER FORELEG, MINUS THE UPPER PART. I REPEAT--THERE WAS A DEER LEG (SANS THE REST OF THE DEER) BEHIND MY COMPUTER.

I have dealt with vomit, urine, and poop, both human and animal, and never been icked out. I have scraped the remains of every type of woodland creature off of our front porch mat without batting an eyelash. But I am here to tell you that seeing three-quarters of a deer's front leg, complete with shiny clean shattered bone at the top and intact hoof at the bottom located behind your computer, will reorganize your day quite a bit.

Naturally, I called Hublet to the scene. He stood there for a moment, absorbing the juxtaposition of high-tech 21st century imagery with Call of the Wild carnage, and then remarked, "It's like The Godfather."

So. Deer leg was disposed of. Bedroom was boiled, vacuumed, disinfected, wiped down with Lysol wipes, boiled and disinfected again. And for the rest of the night whenever there was a lull in conversation or activity, Hublet and I would just look over at each other and calmly declare, "Deer leg." Or, if we were a bit more icked out, "DEER. LEG."

Stupid dog.

Ack! I Have Scrolled Off the Page!

Just a nice way of letting you know that this post is pure filler, people, as I am still in the throes of post-Thanksgiving What the Hell am I Doing I Haven't Shopped or Decorated and Christmas is a Scant 27 Days Away AAAAAAHHHHHHH! trauma.

Yes, I am feeling inadequate. I shall therefore go to Target on my lunch hour, spend money, and feel somewhat accomplished.

Feh. My Christmas Spirit seems somewhat tardy this year.

A Very Long Day in the Life

It is currently 8:55 a.m. here in lovely Raleigh.

I have been awake for almost five hours, and the adrenaline surge is beginning to wear off. So let me catch you up on my life, starting at about 7:00 p.m. last night.

7:00 p.m. - Boy's bathtime. Boy is hyper. Boy is running. Boy is yelling about the daddy monster! I go forth and start the bath.

7:05 p.m. - Chase Boy. Catch Boy. Divest Boy of clothing as we run through four different rooms.

7:08 p.m. - Boy decides he needs to go potty before bathing. Can only reach potty by hopping from towel to clothing to potty, because he doesn't want to fall into the dreaded "Mud Pips." The Mud Pips in question are prominently featured, smelly geographical hazards in two episodes of The Backyardigans, The Boy's new favorite show.

7:12 p.m. - Boy finishes, flees.

7:13 p.m. - Trick Boy into bathtub by telling him that the pinchy bugs will get him unless he's in the tub. Running and laughing ensues.

7:15 p.m. - Boy in (now tepid) tub.

7:20 p.m. - Boy is clean and dry and still naked. He runs to door of bathroom, pauses, arms akimbo, and announces, "I am Nekkid Boy! Surge of the clothed!"
I correct him, "That's SCOURGE, sweetie." Boy runs off.

7:25 p.m. - Boy is in pjs watching TiVo'd Backyardigans and drinking milk.

7:30 p.m. - I go to run three miles.

8:15 p.m. - Boy is being truculent with Hublet. I decide to check email.

8:30 p.m. - More truculence.

8:35 - 9:40 p.m. - Parenting skills severely tested.

10:00 p.m. - I finally get to clean the kitchen.

10:15 p.m. - Pour glass of wine, watch Lost on TiVo.

11:40 p.m. - Bed.

4:18 a.m. - Am awakened by high-pitched buzzing in ears. Mosquito! Flail ineffectually at air in vicinity of ears.

4:20 a.m. - Hublet politely inquires about my actions. Informs me that I won't kill it that way, so stop flailing.

4:21 - 4:40 a.m. - Remain awake, listening for mosqito's return. Obsess about every horrible thing that could possibly occur in my life, ever.

4:41 a.m. - Hublet mutters, "Dammit! Now it's in MY ear!"

5:00 a.m. - Boy yells, "Mommy! Daddy! I need to come in your room!" Climbs into bed and takes 95% of space, an impressive feat for someone weighing only 29 pounds.

5:15 a.m. - Cat climbs on chest, says, "Mew." which translates into "I know you're awake, now make with the tuna so I can go out and kill something before you leave for work."

5:16 a.m - Ignore cat.

5:20 a.m. - Hublet gets up to deal with cat. I realize I have to pee, but refuse to leave the bed because I still have THIRTY MINUTES BEFORE THE ALARM GOES OFF, DAMMIT.

5:30 a.m. - Check clock, shift position to ease bladder pressure.

5:40 a.m. - Repeat.

5:50 a.m. - Turn off alarm, sigh deeply, prepare to greet the stupid day.

6:15 a.m. - Attempt to awaken Boy.

6:50 a.m. - Leave house fifteen minutes behind schedule due to grumpy sleep deprived Boy.

7:00 a.m. - Traffic jam.

7:30 a.m. - Drop off Boy at daycare. He's looking a lot more alert and chipper, at least.

7:45 a.m. - Realize, as I park in Egypt because I was fifteen minutes too late to get the good parking, that I left both my jacket and my umbrella at home. This is bad, because it's raining and chilly.

7:50 a.m. - Walk into work. Turn on space heater to dry off. Wish that Starbucks had a delivery service.

Movies, Movies Everywhere

And I don't know what to see. We've had a running tradition for the past few years about holiday movie viewings: Hublet, Beloved Uncle and I have trekked cineplex-ward on the Friday after Thanksgiving to view a flick ever since The Boy's arrival has made moviegoing more of a tactical undertaking, and then Hublet and I have done the Guilt-Ridden-Parent Movie Day after Christmas, wherein we drop The Boy at the daycare one day during Christmas break and do things like go out to eat, see a movie, and last year's favorite--buy a car.

For the past few years, our choices have been simple: Harry Potter, Master and Commander, and Lord of the Rings. But this year? Yeesh. What to see?

There's the Lemony Snicket movie, which I'd normally be chomping at the bit to see, but Jim Carrey just puts me off my feed. And yes, I know that he's probably well-suited to be an over-the-top villain, but the hook--that he's at least 47 characters in one movie!!!!--worries me in the same way that Mike Myers in a fluffy cat suit worried me. And with good reason. This movie needs to NOT be about the guy in the prosthetic face; it needs to be about the characters in the story. Dammit.

The Incredibles: I HEART Pixar. Hublet, not so much. He's voting for Jim Carrey over fantabulous pixels. Hmmmmm. Also, the film is PG, which means The Boy is ineligible for viewing. So McDonalds? Why are you marketing it to the Happy Meal set, a great number of whom are under the PG age range? Seriously, I was all set to get the next Aladdin character, from a movie that The Boy could watch, and now we've got a tiny Mr. Incredible with Punchy-Punchy action! Guess I'll just have to go see it and figure out the objectionable bits for myself, darn the luck.

The Polar Express: I love the book. We're actually doing a Polar Express train ride in Dillsboro this December. But a computer rendered Tom Hanks--again, in the He Plays Lots Of Characters--WooHoo! mold (Hollywood, what the HELL is your problem?)--kinda creeps me out in the previews. I mean, he looks like a model for Kids, This Is A Pedophile 101. I'm hoping that's just me, but still--ICK.

Bridget Jones II: Read this review. Cry. Move on, secure in the knowledge that there's always Netflix.

After the Sunset: Yeah, I'll see that After You Kill Me and Prop My Corpse Up in the Theatre. Umm, No.

Seed of Chucky: Netflix? After all, Brad Dourif does his voice. I HEART Brad Dourif. Because I am a freak.

National Treasure: Dear God. No.

Elektra: Feral Girl informs me it has Goran Vijkni;ksdojfsoidjfsldg from ER. Next to The God of All Male Perfection (Hugh Jackman), Goran is a pretty. And I like Jennifer Garner. Hublet will be a big fat NO on this one, though. Perhaps I shall attend with Feral Girl and Company...

Ray: Hear it's great, don't care.

The Grudge: Saw The Ring. I'm just saying NO to round-eye remakes of Japanese horror flicks from now on. Seriously.

Saw: Netflix.

Alfie: Just....no. Jude Law is just too mannequin-like for me.

Shall We Dance: No, we shall not. Nor shall we give JLo Any. More. Money. Ever.

Shark Tale: Let's see...Finding Ne-No.

Friday Night Lights: Hublet wants to see it. Perhaps I shall indulge him, and try to get past Manorexic Billy Bob.

Ladder 49: No. Because Joaquin Phoenix as Leading Man Just. Doesn't. Work.

Team America: Want to see it! Still! Looking like a Netflixer, though.

Sigh. Suggestions are welcome. My holiday tastes tend toward epic drama with testosterone, or fantasy.

Kung-fu Grip

We interrupt the political turmoil to bring you this important announcement about:

Pantyhose.

Specifically, control-top pantyhose. More specifically, Victoria's Secret Control and Shaping Pantyhose; or, as I like to refer to them--the butt lifters of DOOM!

For those of you who are not interested in a prolonged discussion of the back end of the female anatomy and its susceptibility to being molded by spandex, please leave now.

Okay, are we alone? Good. I, like most women, keep a pair of control top pantyhose on hand for those occasions when I don't want the look of a form-fitting outfit to be ruined by anatomical imperfections. I don't wear them all the time because, hey, pantyhose suck, but they are sometimes necessary. So, I was in my local VS and decided that since winter was nigh and I had ripped my last pair of hose I'd grab a new one. This being Victoria's Secret there were at least 47 varieties of lifting, shaping, squashing, molding and flattening pantyhose available, and I ended up randomly choosing one based on the picture on the outside. Pantyhose objective achieved. There was much rejoicing. Huzzah.

I didn't realize that these were not your run-of-the-mill tummy tucking and thigh smoothing hose until I broke them out on Sunday. As I struggled mightily to get the hose ON my body without poking a fingernail through them, I realized that something was amiss--there was a strangely tight-feeling band located across my butt. I checked myself in the mirror and noted a two inch wide spandex band running across the back of the pantyhose. What strange device was this? From its current location, it was producing a double-butt effect that was bizarre, to say the least. Butt to the top, butt to the bottom, line of elastic bisecting the two: red butt, blue butt, in a way. Then I realized the spandexical elastical doohickey was meant to reside UNDER the cheekal area, in order to lift and separate. Oh goodie. Now I could have Shelf Booty! With kung fu grip! After another five minutes of struggling, realigning and tucking, everything was in its proper place and I was thanking the deodorant gods that I had chosen the Heavy Duty variety of Secret Solid.

I cannot do justice to the feeling of wearing butt-lift pantyhose except to say that it is roughly akin to walking around with someone constantly pinching your ass. The accompanying feeling of paranoia is also refreshing, as is the constant mental focus on the State of The Ass. And let's not even talk about bathroom visits and their aftermath.

Look, Victoria's Secret, if I want my booty lifted I'll do Pilates. And while we're at it, can we talk about why pantyhose aren't ever made for shortwaisted women (like me)? The ability to tuck the top of my hose into my bra is not one I'm celebrating. Sigh. Back to long skirts and knee-highs it is.

Calling All English Majors

You know who you are, and if, like me, you married another English major, you probably have lots of books lying around that you keep meaning to tote to the used book store or donate to...well, SOMEBODY.

Here's your chance to help some folks out and clean off your bookshelves:

Books for Soldiers

A worthy cause, and definitely an easy one for the lit-nerds amongst us to help out with! Not that anyone around here is a nerd, of course.

Oddbits

At about 4 a.m. I was awakened thus:

MOMMY! THERE'S A GIANT GRASSHOPPER!! ON ME!!

Cue nudging of Hublet to save Boy from Giant Grasshopper of Doom, and resume sleeping.

This morning The Boy had to inspect his bed for the Giant Grasshopper. Cue explanation of the difference between dreaming and reality, and the odd feeling you get when you aren't sure which is which.

Funny, but this whole week has seemed that way. I think I must have been expending a lot of mental energy bracing for drawn-out political upheaval, and when it didn't happen I was left feeling strangely disjointed and out of sync. Weird.

Fortunately, there is no shortage of drawn out political upheaval on the Web. Yay.

Just finished reading Saints and Villains, about Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I didn't mean to read it, just accidentally picked it up and got sucked in--it's like a black hole (except for the getting crushed by gravitational forces thing), once you cross the event horizon there's no going back. I have to say it's one of the best historical novels I've ever read. Goo