St. Blaize

It Could Be a Nice Park

2011-08-23T21:28:00.001-07:00

But it's not.

Instead, it seems like the place where the surrounding churches might do their ritual sacrifices. Isn't that what churches do? Anja said it smelled like livestock. Obvs. lambs.

Photo by happy-dee-dooo.

Titles of Books That Should Never Be Written

2011-08-20T01:37:00.000-07:00

I am working on a list of titles of books that, if written, would be stinkers. So far I have:

The Abandoned Quonset Hut.Quonset 2, north of Dickinson Bayou at Hwy 146, Texas 0404091454, by accent on eclectic

I imagine this as a thriller, perhaps in the vein of The Thing. Or it could be a cosy catastrophe, with military survivors or something. I definitely think it should take place above 60 degrees latitude, I don't know why, nor does it matter because it would suck.

The Suicidal Chipmunk
Don't jump pal!, by Cleber Mori

This could be a morality tale à la James Thurber's Fables for Our Times, but not like David Sedaris' more recent animal stories, which I don't like. Though, since this is a book that should never be written, maybe the Sedaris stories are the model. I don't see how this book could be anything but terrible.

Aerial Application
Untitled, described as "aerial applicator at work near Pettit," by Elliot Blackburn

The title refers to the fancy way of saying "crop dusting," a mode of expression with which I became familiar in childhood from driving past a school for it in LaSalle, Colorado. But I think the book would be about a fraught romance between two trapeze artists. And it would be unspeakably foul.

Travel

2011-07-03T12:59:00.000-07:00

What is travel for?

Martha Gellhorn, in "What Bores Whom?", travels to Israel in 1971 when she is in her 60s. This woman traveled all over alone, and reported on wars and conflicts, starting with the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s. She was also, fairly briefly, married to Ernest Hemingway, which must have been a war and conflict in itself.

Gary Cooper, Martha Gellhorn, Sandra Shaw, and Ernest Hemingway

In Israel, she goes to a Red Sea resort town, and ends up surrounded by hash-smoking hippies hanging out in an abandoned water tank. She writes of them: "In their view, the were traveling to find themselves, rather as if oneself were a missing cufflink or earring that had rolled under the bed. They admired those among them who meditated in the lotus position for a fixed period of time each day. Like I mean he's really into meditation. The meditators were closer to finding themselves. I couldn't imagine any of them ten years hence, having never known such shapeless people."

Breathe. Photo by Beny Shlevich

I like her description, because I have always thought that travel is overrated in its ability to be life-changing. Some people are capable of extreme change, but most are not. Their selves are not "lost" so much as eternally absent, and no amount of travel will help them "find" anything. People who can change can generally change without going anywhere.

It reminds me of the constant misinterpretation of Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken." Almost everyone reads this poem as the narrator having done something brave and taken "the road less traveled by," but I would argue that Frost does not mean that at all. Here is the poem:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
and sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
and looked down one as far as I could
to where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
and having perhaps the better claim
because it was grassy and wanted wear;
though as for that, the passing there
had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
in leaves no feet had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
and that has made all the difference.

In describing the two roads, he first says that "the other" had a better claim "because it was grassy and wanted wear." From this description, we get the idea that the second path is less traveled. However, the narrator admits that this perception is not really true: "though as for that, the passing there/ had worn them really about the same." Then, "And both that morning equally lay/ in leaves no feet had trodden black" [emphasis mine]. The paths are identical, they lay "equally," and neither has been "trodden black." There is no difference in the two paths, so the narrator's choice is arbitrary, not brave.

The "turn" of the poem (like a turn in a sonnet) comes in the last stanza, where the narrator envisions a future time when he or she will be telling the story of choosing a path. In this imagined future narration, the narrator will "sigh" and then, in an act of self-aggrandizement, say "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --/ I took the one less traveled by,/ and that has made all the difference." The repetition of "I--I" emphasizes the future narrative egoism that the narrator envisions.

In the moment of choice between two equal paths, the narrator knows that, at some point in the future, he or she will want to tell the story of the choice in such a way so that the listener will be impressed. Saying, "Yeah, I chose one path for no real reason" is less exciting than saying "I took the one less traveled by" and then claiming that this choice has been the turning point for the formation of the narrator's life. The act of retrospective importance is not to be sneezed at, but I would argue that the vital point the poem makes is that we must realize that the importance is retrospective, not actual, not present. Only in the future does the path taken become "different."

Similarly with travel. Outside of the exceptional person capable of profound change, travel is generally not formative. But in our recollection of the past, we often point to important trips as "moments" when everything changed. We want to remember travel for its alleged formative nature; we do not want to acknowledge its lack of actual formative influence.

Our lives change incrementally. Travel is not in and of itself transformative. The road was not less-traveled.

Allergy

2011-01-20T13:26:00.000-08:00

Me: "Do you really think that asthma is entirely psychosomatic?"

Damian: "Mostly. Everyone knows it. It's really well-documented. When they look at other countries that are less developed, they don't have those problems. So, it's psychosomatic."

*small pause*

"Either that or it's an allergy to money."

Rain Falls

2011-01-11T23:12:00.000-08:00

The only good thing to come out of Saturday's shootings in Tucson happened today, when I heard Bill Clinton say that demonizing political language "falls on the unhinged and the hinged alike." I was delighted by the word "hinged." It reminds me of such contructions as "ept" or "gusted" and I must incorporated it into my vocabulary: "Yeah, overall, despite his troubles, I think in this case he's acting pretty hinged."

I would like to collect other adaptations of the "falls on the just and the unjust alike" idiom, but I don't know how to frame a google search for them. Did you hear that? I don't know how to frame a google search.

I did find this: "Prayer is of no avail. The lightning falls on the just and the unjust in accordance with natural laws." —Robert Ingersoll, nineteenth-century orator

In a different vein, in what seems to be a Christmas letter from the pastor of a church in Canada, whilst talking about A Charlie Brown Christmas, the writer says, "In Canada, God also causes it to snow on the just and the unjust alike, and so we can all have a white Christmas, regardless of our morality; for it's not our morality that's the issue—but it’s our holiness that will be called into account!"

I don't understand religion.

Continuing (oddly enough) with the Charlie Brown theme, there's this:

And, finally, Cormac McCarthy's take on it is that:

"The rain falls upon the just
And also on the unjust fellas
But mostly it falls upon the just
Cause the unjust have the just's umbrellas"

Cryptic Tonsil

2011-01-08T00:14:00.000-08:00

According to the radio, today is National Clean Off Your Desk Day. I, however, am choosing to exercise my god-given American right to celebrate every day as National Don't Tell Me What the Hell to Do Day.

So, I have a sore throat, which almost never happens. In fact, last time I had a cold was over two years ago. I was so appalled by the Terrible Betrayal that I actually took a flashlight this morning and looked at my throat in the mirror, and found one of my tonsils all swole up. Like Doubting Thomas, I had to touch it, and it has the size and approximate consistency of a shooter marble. It almost reaches my uvula (which I have always looked upon as the body part most nearly like those hangy-downy things that for unknown reasons obscenely caress the top of your luggage when it goes into the x-ray machine at the airport).

This just in: don't try to gargle with seasoned rice vinegar in warm water. Its failure as a therapeutic vinegar is second only to that of balsamic.

Added: I kind of suck at gargling.

So, anyway, I drove Mom and Dad and Anja up to the de Young in San Francisco to see the Impressionist exhibit. It was refreshingly not full of the paintings-I'm-ready-to-set-on-fire-because-I-have-seen-them-on-pretty-much-every-calendar-and-"inspirational"-wall poster-ever category, though, really, dude, I don't think even fat women need to be painted as though their torsos look like the bodies of annular worms.

To wit:

According to an article in Smithsonian Magazine from February, 2010, "As long ago as 1913, the American Impressionist Mary Cassatt wrote a friend that Renoir was painting abominable pictures 'of enormously fat red women with very small heads.'" I'm not sure I would agree with "enormously," though nor would I agree with L.A. County Museum of Art's Claudia Einecke, who claims, “He’s using the body for expressive purposes. Hopefully, nowadays, we understand that beauty or the body comes in many different shapes. People can stop saying, 'Oh yuck, these are ugly, fat women.'" I don't care that the women are fat, but that they LOOK LIKE ANNULAR WORMS. Maybe that was your impression, Renoir, but in this case I will say your impression was dumb.

Oh, and I don't have cryptic tonsils, I just really like the phrase.

What They'll Do

2011-01-05T22:56:00.000-08:00

There were all of these news items on the radio today about the Republicans taking over the House of Representatives, and between bouts of just Turning Off the Radio, I kept yelling answers to the question, "What will the Republicans do now?"

My answers included:

Screw over the poor.

Institute REAL death panels, just like in Arizona!

Deny climate change.

Start tattooing immigrants.

Be totally stupid.

SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!!!!!

All in all, not the most productive news-listening day for me. Luckily, I wasn't in the car that much, and thus only listened to the radio sporadically.

The Cat Is Better Now

2011-01-04T21:59:00.000-08:00

I love my kitten—who is not a kitten at all but a three-year-old cat—with a love that is completely out of proportion to the fact that she is a cat. I got her when I was 39, right when it became really really clear that I really really wasn't going to ever have children, and she has an endearing ever-kittenish personality that worked on me to make me love her, as I just said, disproportionately. Last week, she was sick with something that (despite Very Expensive Tests) remains a mystery, but had ratcheted up her temperature to almost 105°. She wouldn't eat or drink or be happy. But, after a course of antibiotics, she is all better, which is so relieving that I feel dizzy. Here is a picture of her:

She's gone back to crying for pets, and running around, and being ridiculous and my life is thus much improved and I'm grateful to my vet, despite the expense, and I'm weirdly grateful to HER for being kind enough to get better.

Oops!

2011-01-04T11:18:00.000-08:00

Only the third day in, and I already missed a day. The reason: I was so irritable for the first half of the day that Everything Single Thing felt like sandpaper. Then Anja and I took a 6-mile hike with the intensity and fervor of pilgrims to Santiago de Compostela. Then I was pretty much incoherent for the rest of the evening. Today, I shall do better.

This Poem Comes to Me This Time of Year

2011-01-02T22:12:00.001-08:00

Perhaps it's cheating, but today's post is a poem by Helen Pinkerton, c. 2002

Nature Note: The California Poison Oak

Dry summers flaw the leaf to a rose flame
Where, as a vine, it seems to flicker higher
Than live-oaks it consumes, or where it leaps
As a free-standing shrub or tree—ablaze
In wild-oat hay fields. Yet, with winter come,
The stems shrink back and almost disappear
In sinuous tangles, while a few white drupes
That look like snowberries hang to trick the eyes.

Nothing will warn but old experience
The ignorant damp hand that comes to dig
In winter rain the dormant trillium:
Seeking to bring a wild spring beauty home
It finds, as parasitic as a drug,
Pain stinging flesh that brushed the stems but once.

Fun-a-Day

2011-01-01T13:58:00.000-08:00

Last year for Fun-a-Day I did an Explore-a-Day, and then printed out photos of my explores and fastened them to some grape stakes along with some words written onto tea-dyed gift tags. It turned out okay. Mom did Leaf-a-Day, wherein she pressed a leaf or leaves each day, then mounted them on paper and made a mobile. It was cool.

This year, Mom is doing Recipe-a-Day, in which she is rewriting her recipes onto new cards. She's quite exercised by the whole idea, and had it planned months ago. I, on the other hand, just figured out that in the interest of writing, a skill I fear I am losing (if I ever had it, really) I am going to do a Post-a-Day. I don't know if anyone will read them, but that's not the point.

So, random thought for New Year's Day: as I listen to my various public radio podcasts, I keep hearing a sponsorship message about the new Chevrolet Volt, with the tagline, "It's More Car Than Electric." My reaction, every single time is, "No, it's not."

I like this person's take on the slogan: "Maybe 'The electric car you can just put gas in on those days when you’re not giving a crap about the environment' was too long."

Kurgan-Teppa, Part One

2009-11-20T13:30:00.001-08:00

Maybe it's strange to have waited so many months to write about my trip, but I was in Tajikistan in May and June, and it was...fairly indescribable. Therefore, describing it? Difficult.

Kurgan-Teppa is also spelled Qurghonteppa or Kurganteppa. Or Қурғонтеппа in Tajik. Formerly known as Курган-Тюбе (Kurgan-Tyube) in Soviet times. Don't ask where my particular hyphenated spelling comes from, because I don't actually know.

We drove through the city, then south, past mixed flocks of sheep and goats being herded along the road, over hills green as Scotland ("Fuck Scotland," I said), where men, women, and children used scythes to cut the grass, laying down another shade of green in squares and rectangles, sometimes on improbable slopes that seemed to threaten to dump the harvesters off into the valleys.

The grass packed on donkeys, or on bicycles, or in the trunks and backseats of cars, or piled onto square two-wheeled metal wagons, pulled by horses, or donkeys, or men, or boys. Mud towns, with corrugated tin roofs, in the distance or, twice or three times, surrounding the two-lane highway. The highway like a road and a farm road and a trail and a sidewalk all at once. The towns all shades of cream and ivory and tan and light brown, with the women's gowns and scarves flashes of color, vivid and strange.

A choikhana with tapchans on both sides of a small steep arroyo, seemingly advertising itself with a few abandoned tent frames over empty tapchans, set a hundred meters before the real teahouse.

In a village, a whole empty bazaar, with concrete-and-tin stalls and frames for sun shades, and tables and places for tables. Is it a weekly bazaar? Does it fill up? Or is there nothing to sell; does everything get sent on to the capital?

At a curve in the road, a line of brightly-dressed (always brightly-dressed) women, each sitting at a little table, each displaying the same small selection of sodas and snacks. Why there? And how does one choose which woman, that day, will take one's money?

A mural on the face of the road cutting, with an eagle and a deer and some nature. Very fetching, but what is it meant to tell us?

We get to Kurgan-Teppa, and pass a tractor--old, spare, awesone--on a pedestal, backed by a park with a collection of arching white cement pieces making a vaguely half-egg-shaped dingus. A monument to the greatness of the TRACTOR, a monument to nothing, as I have only seen the fields being worked by hand, groups of men, women, and children using hoes and shovels, stooping or crouching, working acres by hand, all by hand, the stupidest use of human labor imaginable. While at the moment what appears to be the only thing that the Industrial Revolution did to really, materially, improve people's lives is to make a tractor. Then make tractors.

No fuel? No parts? Just no damn tractors? What's the issue? That would be my NGO: Get the People Tractors. Give them a fuel allowance. Train tractor mechanics. Smuggle in the parts or pay the bribes and keep doing it over and over and over because each hour of working the fields by hand is another hour without rest, literacy, or (so I imagine, barreling by in our fancy Lada Niva four-wheel drive) hopefulness.

Dogtiredness.

Never mind. Tractors can't take away dogtiredness and no doubt the hours freed from the fields would be focused anew, to new back-breaking chores.

Neal Stephenson writes that, "In the real world--Planet Earth, Reality--there are somewhere between six and ten billion people. At any given time, most of them are making mud bricks or field-stripping their AK-47s." That's the choice. I have other choices but my place is so privileged that the spot I take up cannot be doubled. The only way to free my spot would be for me to leave that spot, which I cannot do, because even were I to become a Tajik fieldhand, I would still carry my place of privilege with me; I would be choosing to act downtrodden.

Only when I die will my place be empty, but when that happens, that place will not be available to a Tajik fieldhand. No, it'll go to a nice infant, born of Western parents in a clean Western hospital. Maybe being born in a place with modern sanitation is the initiating mark of privilege. Maybe clean water and disinfectants are the baptismal fluids, holy, altering.

I Felt a Feeling, and I Told You with Punctuation Marks

2009-08-22T19:43:00.000-07:00

Last week, I got a message on this dating website where I have a profile. I don't know why I keep the profile on there. Maybe because I think I might want to meet someone in the future. I certainly couldn't be bothered now. Anyway, the message was...okay-ish. But then I read the guy's profile and under the "I’m really good at" section, he had included "oral sex."

Here was my (not very nice) reply:

"Dear Gene Simmons,

I was considering your proposal semi-positively, until I read your profile and saw your claim of oral sexual prowess. I see you have removed that reference, but the damage has been done. I no longer, nor have I really ever, spent any time with people who want to talk about sex unless they are actually having it (though wordlessness is often better even then), or who would talk about how good they are at it in a public profile.

Also, just so you know, not all women even enjoy said activity.

Reading your profile unfortunately made me feel a bit soiled, and I will be too busy taking multiple Silkwood showers to ever be able to leave the house again.

Sincerely,
Blaize"

He responded with a combination of passive-aggression and aggression-aggression, and a couple of insults followed by a repeated invitation that we do something together. While strange, this reaction didn't bother me, because I figured I had gotten what I deserved. What DID bother me was his repeated use of ;^D

Putting ;^D after calling someone crazy and a prude; what's that supposed to MEAN? "You're crazy and a prude! Winky nosy big smile!"

My reply to the the message, and his reply to that, all occurred during work, and this is why I love my work: my coworkers decided to enact the winky nosy smile In Real Life, and this is what we got:

Inevitably, this led to the recreation of other emoticons. I hope you enjoy the following.

X-)

o__o

D: (Two versions)

>:)

The ever-popular :(

And finally :-D

What to Do in Istanbul

2009-07-04T12:19:00.000-07:00

1. Get frustrated by being sent back and forth along the ferry wharf.

2. Find the right ticket booth/dock.

3. Take the Boğazçi Özel Gezi ferry towards Anadolu Kavağı.

4. Sit next to a nice Turkish couple, on the shady side of the lower deck. It'll mean you see the European side only, but you can't have everything.

5. Get off at Sarıyer.

6. Figure out where the staircases go up the hill and follow them until they peter out in people's private yards.

7. Make an error in choosing a restaurant, and possibly drink from the hose.* (Uncertain as of yet.)

8. Fall into conversation with a young German-educated graphic designer with dyed blond hair and excellent English.

9. Stand on the stoop of his house, which 100 years ago went right to the water, whence the residents traveled in boats, though now it is separated from the water by a road.

10. Discuss Venice, protests in Iran, and one's own potential ability to protest even at the risk of one's life. (Positive, on his side, uncertain to negative on mine. Americans are lazy.)

11. Walk back along the waterfront, photographing the abandoned and inhabited Ottoman-era houses.

12. Go to the Sadberk Hanım Museum.

13. Be awestruck and, later, fatigued by the collection.

14. Buy a present in the gift shop of a coffee cup with an Iznik tile design of a felucca.

15. Catch the 25E bus back toward town.

16. Realize one could get off at any stop, walk around two hours, and return a better person for it.

16a. Have a fleeting fantasy of buying an abandoned Ottoman-era house and repairing it.

17. Have a (fairly handsome) Turkish guy stare at you, even when you stare right back at him for half a minute.

18. Feel weirdly flattered, then self-conscious.

19. Feel sardonic when he, his wife, and kid get off the bus, and you realize that--young-looking as he is--he has a pot-belly.

19a. Skip steps 17-19 if you are not available to such flirtation.

20. Get back to Sirkeci.

21. Pet some cats.

22. Drink tea under a grape arbor while watching an ear-splitting game of Turkish backgammon played between an old bald man in a short-sleeved shirt and Windsor-knotted striped ugly tie, and a younger old guy with a beard wearing a technical vest like a photojournalist, watched by a mild fellow in a blue t-shirt, all three bespectacled.

23. Have the tea be free, because Turks are friendly, or at least these Turks, and you are being rewarded for watching the game. "Turkish culture," the bearded man says, "Have a nice life." "Thank you. You, too," you reply, and mean it.

24. Overall believe you have dodged the hose.

25. Get ready to fall asleep at the sunset prayer hour, because sunset is at almost 9 o'clock, and 3 a.m., the shuttle to the airport, and the almost full day of travel home, is far too soon.

*A phrase used by Ray and Anya to indicate iffy dietary behavior in foreign lands.

My Salad Days, When I Was Green in Judgement, Cold in Blood

2009-04-12T15:03:00.000-07:00

I've been going through boxes of papers, dating back all the way to high school, but mostly consisting of my graduate school work. So, I find notes from classes I took and classes for which I was a teaching assistant. I find the papers from some of my students, which I kept because they were excellent. I find my own papers. And here, on the other side, as a doctoral program drop-out, those papers are an emblem of a life that I can no longer live, a career path I can no longer follow.

I should throw them all away, each and every paper. But instead, I am working to consolidate four boxes into one. And what I am keeping are my students' papers, some notes about topics that still particularly interest me, and my own writing.

In my first year of graduate school, I had a mental breakdown. It was the second quarter, January through March, and my mind was just not quite my own. Yet still, as with my other breakdowns, I managed my schoolwork even as my emotional life flailed.

I was in a very engaging class called "Passing," in which we read and analyzed texts such as The Island of Dr. Moreau, M. Butterfly, and Passing. Animals passing as humans, men passing as women, blacks passing as whites.

I got interested especially in Dr. Moreau, and from that became interested in anti-vivisectionist movements in the nineteenth century. I gave a presentation on my research, and opened by saying "Before I begin, I want you all to know that it is a miracle of modern medicine that I can be with you here today." Then I passed around my bottle of anti-depressants.

It seemed like a good thing to do at the time. And the professors (there were two) liked it, probably because it was less boring than the usual introduction of a graduate student presentation.

Anyway, in going through my papers, I found a paper I wrote for that class, which is titled "sex, lies, and vivisection, or Fuck Black Beauty."

As I said, I was having some "issues."

I also found my handout for my presentation. I reproduce it here for your consideration.

This was during the first Gulf War, and so here are close-ups of some bits:

And here is my "Fun Words" list:

The Heat Death of the Universe

2009-04-09T23:16:00.000-07:00

Fig. 1: Photo © ewan.osullivan

Today (which will live in infamy blah blah blah) I will call The Great California OMG WTF :( :( 2009. Or, alternately, The Great Pwnage.

Some person or persons as yet unknown cut some fiberoptic cables in two separate locations in Silicon Valley, plunging a bunch of people into cellphone, internet, and credit card swipe machine darkness.

One would have thought it was the end of Time and Life as We Know It.

I got up. My computer wouldn't connect to the web. I listened to the radio briefly and heard there was a general service problem. Then I went to work. My boss is smart, and keeps paper credit card carbons on hand, which is an excellent idea around here. There are an astonishing number of short and long power outages in this two-bit podunk gin-joint, and who can actually afford to lose a day's business just because the power goes out? His mom took the machine that one uses with carbons, but my boss just rubs with the side of a pen, like a rabid genealogist creating a memento mori with charcoal and a tombstone.

People were ASTOUNDED that they could use credit cards in our store, because I guess no one else has carbons. Which I find weird, cf. frequent power outages.

All day the rumors were flying: it was terrorists; it was a disgruntled union member; it was construction. I liked my boss's explanation: Giant Gopher. Or my coworker's: space aliens. Or mine: the enormous radioactive ants from Them! At one point, my boss and I were discussing the whole reductio ad terrorum phenomenon, and I said we should apply Occam's Razor, which would result in us deciding that the problem had been caused by, as my boss put it, "Joe on his tractor." I mean, how many times has terrorism caused something bad to happen in the United States? I count three. And how many times has Joe on his tractor fucked something up? Pretty much constantly.

As it turned out, it was a Giant Gopher, or vandals, or--according to some sources--saboteurs, which I disagree with, since there were no wooden shoes involved. As far as I know. These vandals hoisted manhole covers at two different locations, went underground, and cut the cables. Once the online came back online, I read several different accounts, which all seemed to emphasize that the vandals had to use "special tools" both to lift the manhole cover and to cut the cables. You mean "special" like the crowbar from my car trunk and a pair of bolt cutters from the hardware store? (See Fig. 2). It's like rocket surgery!

I think the news should have just alerted us to the fact that the vandals have hands, and are tool-users, and that the public should be on the lookout for a band of rogue bonobos. Possibly unionized. Wearing black. With anarchist patches sewn on.

Fig. 2: Special Tool. Watch out!

My boss started pantomiming the event, first pretending he was using a crowbar to jimmy up the manhole cover and bolt cutters to cut the cables. Next pretending he was just grappling the cover out of the way and then gnawing the cable. Much like a Giant Gopher.

So, what with the customers having various kinds of cows about the whole thing, and us making fun of both the event and the customers' cows, it was a full day. The weirdest (okay, not weirdest; most aggravating) repeated comment ran along the lines of "Oh, I'm kind of enjoying the break of not having my cellphone."

I find this attitude mysterious and idiotic. This is what my mind heard: "Oh, one day a mean mean man came to my house and put a gun to my head and gave me a mobile phone and told me that he would torture and kill me and all my loved ones if I didn't carry the phone with me at all times and always leave it on and answer it even during the quiet parts of classical music concerts and yoga class and even when I should be talking to the Real Live Person who is right in front of me tapping a foot in frustration and today is Such a Relief because I actually can't follow his orders. Free at last! Free at last!"

These people fall in a certain clear camp in the whole free will vs. predestination debate, don't you think?

Jasmine Nguyen, spokesperson for St. Louise hospital in Gilroy, said it most ineptly: "We literally feel like we're on an island right now. It's bringing us back to the Stone Age."

Because literal is the new figurative, and the internet and cellphone communication arose directly after the Pleistocene-Holocene extinction of the North American megafauna. Actually (in case you didn't know) the internet was platformed on some proprietary software trademarked by Giant Sloths Eaten by Sabre-Toothed Tigers, L.L.C. (See Fig 3.)

Fig. 3: 1337 hax0r of yore, pictured with favorite plushie.

The Daily Vitriol, or, A Comment I Wrote

2009-03-26T18:54:00.000-07:00

I have Netflix. I get one DVD at a time, and watch TV hosted by Netflix on the computer. Recently Netflix changed their online viewer, and made the mistake of asking my opinion about the quality of my most recent viewing. I felt obligated to tell them. I didn't think I was in a particularly splenetic mood, but I guess I was. Or maybe I'm always like this.

Comment:
"Since Netflix 'upgraded' to Silverlight, 'watch instantly' watching has become almost unwatchable: exceedingly choppy and often completely stop-and-go when viewed 'full screen.'

I am sure mine is not the first complaint about this. Nor will it be the last. (A simple Google search for 'silverlight sucks' should give you an idea of the problem).

In this economy, a business model that works to make customer satisfaction WORSE is probably not a very good idea. I would recommend you fix this problem as soon as possible.

In addition, the search engine on your site is really poor. Why don't you use Google search like normal people? You and amazon and your stupid terrible search engines. Amazon must seriously lose $100,000 a day because people simply cannot find stuff on their site.

Finally, I would like to say that only being able to 'watch instantly' using Internet Explorer is exceedingly trying. I don't know if you know this, but Internet Explorer is crappy, and only used by your grandma, who just learned to use the computer last month. And even grandma will have Firefox once one of her loving grandkids (a category that does not include you, obviously) comes over and installs it for her and puts a shortcut for it on her desktop labeled 'google.' I know this, because that's what I did for my grandma-aged parents. And all of a sudden their browser wasn't one invented in the Cretaceous Period by giant land animals who are now extinct. It's amazing. It's called 'evolution'!"

Not Good

2009-02-02T19:47:00.001-08:00

So. Yesterday, I thought the smell might be, say, a mouse--cat slain and festering--under my shed. Today, that seemed impossible. So, I looked around. And then I saw two raccoon tails protruding from under my neighbor's trailer.

Pink rubber gloves, a respirator mask, quadruple garbage bags, and a neighbor to hold open the bags whilst the first one went in, and I had two full-grown dead raccoons ready to be picked up by Animal Services.

Why did they die right next to each other, as if in a suicide pact? Will Animal Services perform a necropsy so I will know whether someone is poisoning wildlife in my trailer park? How soon can I get the cats to the vet for their rabies shots?

And why, oh, why, was that NOT the grossest thing I've ever done?

Best Newly-Learned Word of 2009, Thus Far

2009-01-25T19:20:00.000-08:00

I was reading about trying to identify the offending birds responsible for plane crashes and that one emergency water landing a week ago. The New York Times informs me that "a staff of four in the Feather Identification Lab took in samples from 4,600 bird-plane collisions, or bird strikes, last year. Arriving mostly in sealed plastic bags, these included birds’feet, whole feathers or tiny bits of down, and pulverized bird guts, known as snarge."

Snarge.

Although it showed up--correctly defined--in the urban dictionary in 2005, I'm not the only one who seems to have enjoyed its more-recent appearance in The New York Times. And how could I be? IT'S A GREAT WORD.

The Saddest Letter in the World

2009-01-24T14:42:00.001-08:00

Found in a book bought at the thrift store more than 20 years ago, although I believe it dates from even earlier than that. Transcribed below.

TRANSCRIPTION
[I have kept the mistakes and the overuse of commas, as I think they add to the effect of the text.]
Burlington, July 3:
Dear Forrest and Evelyn:

This is rather a lonely evening. Janell has been here, but since we were not going to do any special celebrating, she has gone to a friend’s home for the night. Some friends invited us both to their home to watch the fire works across the Lake( and for dinner) but, I hesitate to accept invitations that I know would only obligate me, as I can’t repay them.

I worked this afternoon, and think I am to work tomorrow. Must ask about that again. They have been calling on me pretty often, to work day times. I am glad for this as I know this Pneumonia will have run up a big bill. Beside that, I do enjoy the store work.

Went to the Dr. This A.M., and he checked me again for a 'tender spot' below my ribs. He suggested that I go to the Xray Clinic when I have a free day, and make sure it is alright.

I am really feeling very good again, except that I do tire too easily. But, I think this is a part of Pneumonia.

How are you doing, Forrest? And, did your Dr. call yours Pneumonia, too?It seems there are so many people around here, losing their voice. Janell, was terribly hoarse, for a couple of days. She is much better again, but it is still apparent.

Janell is picking strawberries, and thoroughly disgusted. The berries are so rotten.I am not real sure she will go back. Today, she killed more time, than she spent picking.And the farmers feel rather unkindly to those who ‘goof off!She won’t be here so very long anyhow, and may as well have fun with her old friends, while she is here.

We have been having the most unbelieveable weather!Now, it is 9:30 P.M., and nearly75’. It has been real warm in the days. We need rain again, too.

We went out to pick the gooseberries, and the mosquitoes were so bad that we gave it up. Will have to do that in daytime. I don’t think they will be so bad, then. So, Janell decided to go away for the evening, and night.Some kind of insect gets on the goose berries every year, and strips off all the leaves by the time they are ready to pick, that is bad enough, but, this year, it looks like every berry is damaged. In the morning, I will stem these,and check if they are too bad to use. I cant eat pies made of them, but do surely like jelly and jam. The raspberries are ripening now, too. I don’t have any desire to put up things this year-- not even to freeze berries, but, I am sure I will.

A friend brought us a big supply of fresh potatoes, peas, and carrots, and small beets with the greens still on. I think I will have to eat these alone, as Janell says she does not care for them (The beets, I mean)

I read an article a few days ago, about Salmonella. It said that the symptoms are so like other things, that it is often undetected, without w complete check up, with Salmonella in mind. It is a pretty serious thing, and I did wonder if it was possible that some so- called stomach flu, could be that.

I think you, Forrest, must feel like I did. I thought that if I was in a dryer climate, I would better off. But, now that I feel well again, and the weather is so fine, I can’t quite think of leaving.But no one can deny that the past winter was “LOUSY”.

I did have the nicest Birthday, in spite of myself. An unusual number of nice cards, gifts, phone calls, etc. etc. So, at least, I did not sit alone and mope and feel sorry for myself.

How is the shorthand coming Evelyn? I hope you either have passed or are ready to take your Exams, and pass with high grades. I think this may be like some of us think about College degrees. You are already proficient in Short hand, anent you? But to pas certain requirements you must be TOPS.

Of course, I know that to be a full fledged Court Reporter, a good speed is needed.I don’t see how any one can interpretor translate into short-hand, what is said, so fast.

I am glad that more new students are coming into the school, and hope they continue to come in. Have you gotten any students with Gov’t. Aid, as you had hoped?

Your Plainview house sounds interesting, and I hope it will work out to your advantage- whatever ou do with it. It does sound like it would make a lovely home for you. If you do the necessary work on it, to sell, it should be ready if you want to keep it, too. I have always thought it is nicer to live in a HOUSE than an APARTMENT, but there is a lot of yardwork involved, and in an apartment, the repairs are taken care of, and I am feeling it would be nice to be in one, so, we must each do as we feel is best,for ourselves.

I think I will get this to the P.O.and get ready for bed
As I said, “It is a lonely evening,” may as well sleep it off.

I almost forgot to thank you for your very generous Birthday gift to me. I have not yet used it, but will get something I, especially want, with it. I have put it away with other ‘Gift Moneys’ and am thinking of a real comfortable new chair.But in the meantime, Thank You very much!

Much Love to you both,

[signed]
Mother

P.S. I forgot to tell you that Harold was here Saturday night and Sunday A.M. He had some business at Oak Harbor, and it took more time than he had thought it would. This was all done as a favor for a couple of his friends, and the paid his way up here to work out some Corporation Papers. Sat. eve. We all three, visited athomes of 4 friends. This is doing pretty well in such a short time.His plan was, to start backlast night, or this morning. He thought he had a new job, but he had not been called to it, before he left home.

I can hear fireworks, but cant see anything.I think I have lost my Youth. Even Fireworks , no longer fascinate me.
Love,
[signed]
M

Sorry, But It's Time for More Creepy Graphics

2008-12-13T18:42:00.000-08:00

While I freaked out at least one reader with my post on the Frankensteinian book jacket, I am compelled to write again about graphic design.

Working as I do at a feed store, I am up close and personal with many products, and get to witness vicariously the joys and sorrows that must be the daily fare of designers and advertisers. For example, one rubber toy YELLS that it is "THE WORLD'S BEST DOG TOY!" (It puts that claim in quotes. Maybe they are "air quotes." How am I to know?) But when I first noticed that string of words I thought, "Huh. I thought THE WORLD'S BEST DOG TOY! was a half-rotted duck rolled in cat poop and buried under a pile of sticks."

Here's the latest product to catch my eye:

My dog--according to this image--will upon receiving this toy become irate/evil (note the eyebrows), take a bunch of meth (note the eyeballs), and slaver after my blood (note the teeth). Not only that, but my dog will ENJOY it (note the self-satisfied grin-like expression).

How, oh how, is this supposed to sell dog toys? Because I don't know about you, but living with an animal descended from wolves, an animal that has a full jaw of sharp teeth and the instincts of a predator, would be frightening enough. I would give my dog toys to soothe it and make it forget that I am weaker and really should be a prey species and have separated it from its kind and forced it to be my entertainment slave. I would not give the dog toys that render it feral and make me have to curl in a ball and try to protect my soft organs.

However, I don't own a dog. I have cats. Which, while always on the verge of ripping open my arm, are rather small and easily-managed. Maybe dog owners like to live in fear. Maybe dog owners want their pets--oops, excuse me, companion animals--to transmogrify and at the same time anthropomorphose into Jack the Ripper.

I guess we all like to live on the edge somehow. Therefore:

Dear Dog Owners (or Friends of Companion Animals if you prefer),

I have enclosed for your enjoyment a dog toy. For your dog. When you give this toy to your dog, you will need to run As Fast as Humanly Possible to your specially-designed anti-wolf/freakish-Jack-the-Ripper-Sweeney-Todd-Ted-Bundy- chimera panic room (not that it'll help, since your dog can run faster).

Or you must Resign Yourself to Fate.

Either way, it'll be good for you! Exercise! Adrenaline! Excitement! Living-on-the-Edge!

We hope you tell your friends about this marvelous opportunity.

Yours Truly,
The World's Most Ill-Conceived Dog Toy Company

Mixed

2008-12-05T13:20:00.000-08:00

This town has strange zoning laws, or maybe a strange lack of zoning laws. The result is neighborhoods with houses, businesses, and light industry all together. In other words: paradise.

Book Jacket Madness

2008-11-24T14:44:00.000-08:00

I've been reading some books by Arnaldur Indriðason, specifically Jar City, Silence of the Grave, and Voices. All three have similar covers, with a man walking or running away from the viewer, into a landscape of some kind. They're moody, and the guy is wearing a detective-esque trenchcoat, flapping around his thighs. The jacket designer, intriguingly-named David Baldeosingh Rotstein, has done (I think) a decent job.

Looking at the credits for the jacket design of Voices, I find evidence of a kind of excessive cut-and-paste that has me reaching for my X-Acto knife and glue stick in sympathy. The credits, after acknowledging Mr. Rotstein's jacket design, devolve into madness:

Jacket photograph of hallway and door © Michael Trevillion/Trevillion Images

Jacket photograph of street scene © Chad Ehlers/Jupiter Images

Jacket photograph of running man © Robert Whitman/Jupiter Images

Jacket photograph of legs of running man © Image Source/Jupiter Images

I think it was the legs--taken from their native body and sutured onto a foreign torso--that gave me the creeps, reminding me of the freakish toy creations of serial-killer-in-the-making Sid Phillips in the movie Toy Story.

Was the man burked before being dismembered? Was he quartered as a regicide? Is Mr. Rotstein a kind of graphic designer-y Dr. Frankenstein?

Moreover, and completely unrelated, why do I find high dynamic range photos often so unpleasant and jarring?

Finally, what is the use of this particular post?

You've Got Friends!

2008-08-25T12:29:00.000-07:00

BLARGING is weird. It's a world. A world in the series of tubes. The tube-world can overlap with the "real" world, which makes it all the more eerie.

My Actual Friend in Real Life has a BLARG. She is super-talented and makes wonderful things that make me think better of the world than I am wont to on average.

She used this ribbon to make a wrist pincushion:

See? She even teaches you how to make the things that make me think better of the world &c.

I think that the Charles Perrault version of "Little Red Riding Hood" is far more interesting than the sanitized versions. The chick gets MUNCHED by the wolf. Here's what Perrault says is the moral:
"From this story one learns that children, especially young lasses, pretty, courteous and well-bred, do very wrong to listen to strangers, And it is not an unheard thing if the Wolf is thereby provided with his dinner. I say Wolf, for all wolves are not of the same sort; there is one kind with an amenable disposition — neither noisy, nor hateful, nor angry, but tame, obliging and gentle, following the young maids in the streets, even into their homes. Alas! Who does not know that these gentle wolves are of all such creatures the most dangerous!"

See? MEN ARE BAD! SEX CAN KILL!!!

The Perrault version has all the reassurance and loveliness of Der Struwwelpeter. Der Struwwelpeter is scary, and my friend Manuel (who was born in Germany) actually was given it to read as a child. So he got to read stories such as the title story, in which, according to wikipedia (which tells no lies) "a boy who does not groom himself properly...is consequently unpopular."

BRUSH YOUR TEETH! CUT YOUR NAILS! OR RISK SOCIAL OBLOQUY!

I saw a theatre production called Shockheaded Peter when some friends of mine (who are excellent) took me to NEW YORK CITY. Because they are nice and like me. The theatre production was very great, especially the version of "Die Geschichte vom Daumenlutscher" (The Story of Little Suck-a-Thumb), in which "a mother warns her son not to suck his thumbs. However, when she goes out of the house he resumes his thumb sucking, until a roving tailor appears and cuts off his thumbs with giant scissors."

BLOOD! BLOOD! AWFUL! OBEY YOUR PARENTS! BE GERMAN! WHATEVER! ICKY!

It Takes a Worried Man...

2008-07-08T12:15:00.000-07:00

As some of you may know, I work part-time at a pet food store. This job, while below my education level, is not below my intelligence. If it were, I'd be better at it, wouldn't I?

The best part of the job is mocking the customers.

Well, okay, the best part of the job is the nice customers, but one of the most amusing parts of the job is mocking the customers. The following story thus helps keep up my Job-Amusement Quotient.

The Worried Man is (to my chagrin) a regular. He comes in at least once a week, and seems always to be in a state of what my boss calls "slow, placid panic." Everything is a struggle for him, a struggle written--much like a narrative of an unsuccessful and scurvy-ridden Viking trip to Greenland--on his face, which has a permanent expression like this:
(Please note, this is a simulation, enacted for instructional purposes only.)

I made the mistake some weeks ago of trying to help Worried Man identify some bird he was (ineptly) describing. So, on Tuesday, Worried Man came out to where I was pulling plastic off of the delivery pallets, and said, "You know a lot about birds."

"I know a little," I replied.

The Worried Man (worriedly): "A little?" [Try to imagine a subtle yet pervasive whininess. What a minute, it's not subtle; it's just whiny. The idea that I am not a Total Bird Expert has sunk him nearly to the Slough of Despond.]

Me: "What's the problem?"

The Worried Man: "I have these stellar jays I feed, and I just throw the seeds on the ground, but yesterday a gopher came up [gestures with his fingers in a way meant to indicate a gopher coming up] out of the ground right in the middle of where I throw the seeds down and started trying to gather up the seeds."

Me (already tired of this conversation): "Uh-huh."

The Worried Man: "So what would you do?" [Imagine an almost professional level of helplessness. He just Can't Imagine What to Do. The problem is insurmountable unless it could, maybe, be solved by NASA.]

Me: "Well, you could put the seeds on a table." [Duh.]

The Worried Man: "A table?" (confusedly, as though a. the word is unfamiliar, or b. the concept of "table" is just one too many for him.)

"Yeah. You know. Like a yard table. A gopher would have a hard time climbing a table leg," I say somewhat brusquely, making a gesture indicating a small tube like the leg of a table.

The Worried Man: "A table?" [Still evidently unclear on the concept.] Wouldn't the gopher just climb it? What about something else, not a table? What about a milk crate?" [A milk crate is not a table. Usually. And the fact that he actually knows this is nothing short of miraculous, akin to the Virgin Birth or the belief that supply-side economics actually works.]

Me (wondering if this man has recently or in the past undergone frontal lobotomy, or leucotomy, as they like to call it in the UK, or at least in the literature that I've read from the UK. Maybe in the UK they really just call it "Making someone an annoying git" or something else suitably witty and British, but the books use the word leucotomy): "Well, a gopher would have a lot easier time climbing a milk crate than a table."

The Worried Man: "It would?" [Wonderment! Amazement! HOW HOW could this be possible?!]

Me (sighing tiredly, mostly inwardly, because this is, in fact, a customer and we need custom): "Think about it [wrong phrase to use with this guy]. A milk crate would be easier to climb than a table leg. I mean a rat could probably climb a table leg, but even a gopher could climb a milk crate."

The Worried Man (With a "Eureka!"-type insight): "Because it's like a lattice? The milk crate?"

Me: "Uh-huh." [By the way, I'm working this whole time, tearing off the plastic from the pallet loads, opening boxes, sorting stuff, vaguely hoping that appearing busy might make him Shut Up. Or even, with luck, cause the earth to open beneath his feet so that he just disappears with a final, worried, wail.]

The Worried Man: "Well, I just don't know how to keep the gopher away." [This much has become obvious, but it's nice to hear. Repetition is a great teaching tool.]

Me (wondering how long this conversation can possibly last, yet still trying, Lord knows why, to help this sorry sack): "You could put down some gopher wire and make an area where a gopher couldn't dig."

The Worried Man: "Gopher wire?" [Two words that have never appeared together before in his cosmogony. Maybe the phrase needs to be categorized among the great oxymora of the English language, along with Shakespeare's "that is hot ice" and groupings such as "achievable fantasy" or "marijuana initiative."]

Me: "Yeah. Gopher wire. It's like poultry wire but the holes are smaller, generally, and sometimes it has double wires to make it harder to chew through."

The Worried Man (unaware that he is *this close* to getting punched): "Gopher wire?"

Me: "You can get it at the hardware store. They probably have some back at the nursery, but they might just have gopher wire cages to plant your bulbs in or whatever." [I'm babbling now. I know he has no idea what a gopher cage for bulb-planting is, but I have Ceased to Care. Soon I will begin to explain my argument as to why bear-baiting and public execution are not indications that Early Modern English society was somehow excessively bloodthirsty and that Elizabethan and Jacobean revenge drama were not, despite many modern interpretations, actually mere spectacles of violence. And why would I start explaining this argument? Because I feel like it.]

The Worried Man: "Gopher wire? So it's like chicken wire?" [See I made the mistake of calling it "poultry wire," which is what they call it when you try to buy it at the hardware store. I assumed, obviously in error, that many people know that chickens are, in fact, a kind of poultry.]

Me: "Yes. You could make an area lined with gopher wire so the gopher couldn't dig there." [I really don't know how this could actually work. I mean, if you just laid the gopher wire down, the gopher would dig up next to the wire, traipse daintily (or not daintily. Maybe some gophers are clumsy.) across to where the seeds are and, voilà! Screw you, gopher wire! One would really need to make more of a gopher wire box, but since gophers can climb gopher wire (because, much like a milk crate, it has a lattice structure), I have no clue what good gopher wire would do anyone in this situation. Or, rather, at this point in the conversation (loosely-termed), I have no clue how Anything would do Anyone Any good in Any situation. Ever.]

The Worried Man: "So I could maybe put some gopher wire down and make a place where the gopher can't dig?" [They say that repeating a person's last phrase proves you are listening. They say wrong. Okay, well, not wrong exactly. They say dumb.]

Me (resignedly): "Uh-huh."

The Worried Man: "Maybe I could get some gopher wire. It seems sort of complicated." [Like brain surgery or string theory, one imagines.]

Me (trying to find some way, any way, for this conversation to be over): "You could also get a bird feeder."

The Worried Man: "I just really like being able to just throw the seed down." [Having Things Stay the Same Even with the Advent of the HORRIBLE GOPHER MENACE OF DOOM CRAP OH HELL CRAP is clearly an idée fixe with him. A solution is the last thing he wants. I think he has a crush on me, and in future when he comes into the store, I will have to leave the building.]

Me (wondering haven't we been here before?): "Well, then you could just put out a table to throw it down on."

The Worried Man (in a phrase that deserves to be lauded and passed down in story and song across time and culture): "But then I'd have a table in my yard."

******************************************************************************

After this, I said, "Well, good luck with that." But my heart wasn't really in it. Then I went and hid in the bathroom until he left.

FLDS

2008-06-02T17:26:00.000-07:00

I know this is probably the wrong question to ask, but if the FLDS women are all "into" dressing "old-fashioned" * (as opposed in the 1950s when FLDS members dressed mostly like other people in their decade and area) why are the dresses the color of icky dinner mints? I don't think "icky dinner mint" was a dye color available to the pioneers. And why did Warren Jeffs require that the dresses be made of polyester, which as far as I am given to understand is not something that existed in the olden days. And is French-braided hair an article of the faith? Because I've never seen its like in any old photos of actual pioneers.

Oh, and in case you are actually interested, here is an explanation given by a former member.

* Read the comments on this article. Creepy.

Soylent Green is People!

2008-01-02T19:28:00.001-08:00

So, we got samples of this new dog food at work and, given the runic nature of the font used on the packaging, we got into a debate as to whether the Elves that obviously constitute the main ingredient of the food are free-range or wildcrafted. Allan at work thought wildcrafted, as does Sylvia; Damian thought definitely farm-raised free-range Elves, and I would have to agree. Wildcrafting Elves would be too hard, unless the company has a team of trained attack wolverines. And from what I know, wolverines are difficult to train.

Balsamic Vegetables

2007-10-18T08:58:00.001-07:00

Something I Did Today, originally uploaded by St. Blaize.

By request, here is the recipe, from Lynne Rossetto Kasper's book, The Splendid Table.

I made about a batch-and-a-half. Looking at the recipe, I realize now that I forgot the olive oil. Crap.

1 quart white wine vinegar (I buy white wine vinegar in gallon jugs, for canning.)
2 2/3 cups water
1/2 cup olive oil (It specifies extra-virgin, but do people actually use any other kind in the U.S.A?)
1 tablespoon coarse salt
1/4 cup sugar (I cut this back, as I do the sugar in most recipes. I also used raw sugar, for the extra taste.)
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1 1/2 teaspoons fresh chopped basil or 1/2 teaspoon dried basil
3 medium red bell peppers,
3 medium yellow bell peppers, cut into 1/2-inch wide strips (I used 4 red bell peppers, because that's what I had, cut into half-inch wide and 1 1/2-inch long chunks, because I like the pieces smaller.)
1/2 medium-sized cauliflower, cut into bite-size flowerettes (I used 2 heads of organic cauliflower, which was a beautiful golden color that is unfortunately obscured by the balsamic vinegar in the finished product here.)
8-10 pearl onions (I just used a regular onion, chunked, because pearl onions are hard to peel, and I didn't have any on hand. I also put whole peeled garlic cloves, because that's the kind of gal I am: garlicky.)
1/3 cup balsamic vinegar

It says these need to be made at least 3 days ahead (so the vegetables actually marinate). It also says they last 3 weeks in the fridge, but they last much much longer if you put them into hot, clean jars. By "much much longer" I mean "months."

Combine ingredients other than vegetables and balsamic vinegar. Bring to a boil and simmer 2 or three minutes.

Drop the peppers and cauliflower into the marinade, bring back to a boil, cook (uncovered) 2 to 3 minutes (I cooked it a bit longer, because my cauliflower pieces were maybe more than "bite-sized" and I wanted them to get tender). Remove with slotted spoon and set aside (or, as I did, put them into an enormous jar). Add the onions (and in my case, the garlic) to the marinade and cook 5 minutes or until barely tender. Remove with slotted spoon and add to vegetables. Boil the marinade uncovered for 5 minutes. Remove from heat, add balsamic vinegar, and pour over the vegetables, adding more white wine vinegar if you need to in order to cover the vegetables.

Eat them WITH YOUR MOUTH.

Trip

2007-10-15T11:04:00.001-07:00

So, the boyfriend's mother is visiting from the Netherlands, and a friend of his is also visiting from the Netherlands, and we are all slated to go in a rented R.V. on a trip. For reasons best known to himself, the boyfriend wants to take us to Eastern Oregon, to Lake Malheur. It looks pretty.

But I think it will be cold. Given my own druthers, I would probably head for more southern climes, such as Arizona. I understand that, for people from a small and crowded country, the basin-and-range areas of Eastern Oregon and Nevada can hold a certain magic. But I would argue that the desert Southwest could be just as magical, and certainly warmer and drier.

I just hope I make it. My unseasonal depression seems--perhaps because unseasonable-- unshakable. What to do, what to do? What to do when nothing helps?

I sort of just want to stay home and hide. I sort of just want to stay home and hide and drink tea and work in the garden a bit. But I hold the romantic hope that travel can change me (I know; I know). I am supposed to leave on Friday, and be gone for nine days or so.

Thermopylae

2007-10-03T18:00:00.000-07:00

Honor to those who in the life they lead
keep and guard their own Thermopylae.
Never betraying what is right,
consistent and just in all they do
but showing pity also, and compassion;
generous when they're rich, and when they're poor,
still generous in small ways,
still helping as much as they can;
always speaking the truth,
yet without hating those who lie.

And even more honor is due to them
when they foresee (as many do foresee)
that Ephialtis will turn up in the end,
that the Medes will break through after all.

--Constantine P. Cavafy

Translated by
Edmund Keeley & Philip Sherrard

All Is Fair...

2007-09-11T23:26:00.000-07:00

(This was originally written in 2002 for the now defunct The Alarm! newspaper)

She moved through the fair.
Her green eyes darted like the wind.
She moved through the fair
As if it were someplace she’d never see again.

She stops and waits.
She stands just beyond the light.
And if heaven calls, she knows she’ll go.
And if not, she’ll be all right.

She moved through the fair.
Her cotton dress was new.
She looked like a queen. --Bill Morrissey

(Photo by MissyV110)

All is Fair in Love

We had planned to go to the fair on September 11. After my dad woke me up that morning and told me to turn on the TV, I took it upon myself to call everyone I could think of. I woke Becky up out of a sound sleep, and she, in a dream-addled voice, asked, “Does that mean we don’t get to go to the fair?”

We couldn’t have gone to the fair that day, even if we hadn’t been stuck in front of the television, watching the same images over and over and over. Governor Gray Davis had ordered a postponement of the fair’s opening day. We went a couple of days later.

They probably would have used hand-held metal detectors to scan us all at the gate anyway, but the process took on an eerie significance. Everything that day was to take on some kind of eerie significance.

I know they have agricultural and craft fairs in other countries. But, for me, there is nothing that makes me feel more American than a fair or a parade.

We went to see the poultry exhibit. I was delighted with the cages full of Spangled Hamburg, Dominique, Cochin, and Polish chickens. I thought of the ingenuity, the centuries of careful breeding and happy accidents, that went into the creation of utility breeds—chickens that are both good laying chickens and good eating chickens. Many of these breeds are now endangered as the poultry industry focuses on specialty chickens with either prodigious laying capacity or giant hormone-pumped meaty muscles. I found myself feeling melancholy in the contemplation of endangered chickens. I hoped that the ingenuity that created them was not also endangered.

(photo by hen power)

We saw the goats and sheep, the horses and cows. We went into Brad’s Reptile World and ogled the exotic animals. We went to the petting zoo and got to stroke a bristly squirming baby pig no bigger than my cat. We saw a big bunny in a cage, with a baby bunny perched exactly on the center of its back. We watched the carnies hustle customers to try the games. We paid for our tickets to bet on the racing pigs. We ate fried things and felt covered with a thin film of grease. We admired the prize-winning pumpkins and lemons, and the vegetables dressed up like animals and people.

There was something about the whole thing that felt bittersweet and a little frightening. It felt odd to be in a crowd when my instinct was to avoid congregations of people. It felt odd to be seeking enjoyment when my instinct was to mourn. It felt odd to worry in such an innocuous situation. But, my illogical mind asked, if terrorists were out to attack symbols of American culture and society, wouldn’t a county fair be a reasonable target?

One room off to the side of the fruit and vegetable building had a display on patents and inventions. There we looked at an exhibit documenting an invention by 1930s Hollywood actress Hedy Lamarr. Her plan was to use radio signals to guide torpedoes. This original purpose never panned out, but her patent is the basis of modern-day satellite communications. I was struck by the weirdness of chance, the coincidence that meant I was reading about Hedy Lamarr at a county fair two days after September 11’s strange intersection of cell phones and war.

All is Fair in War

I was already being told by the media that September 11 was my generation’s Pearl Harbor. I had already formulated my dissent against this characterization: since Pearl Harbor led to the wide-scale relocation and internment of Japanese aliens and Japanese-Americans, and, to a lesser extent, of Italian- and German-Americans, I didn’t like the potential implications of the Pearl Harbor metaphor. Also, the attack on Pearl Harbor was the act of a nation against a military target. September 11 was, as far as we could tell, the attack of a group. And the target had been, for the large part, civilian.

Yet, in some ways, the Pearl Harbor comparison was apt. After Pearl Harbor, residents of California worried they would be next. After September 11, I think that most of us, at one point or another, however fleetingly, worried we might be next. I worried, fleetingly, that I might be next.

Pearl Harbor had its effect on the Santa Cruz county fair, too. In 1941, the fair completed its purchase of the land where it is held to this day, and the first county fair on the site took place in October of that year. On June 11, 1942, six months after Pearl Harbor, the Santa Cruz Sentinel announced that “A series of small fairs or field days will probably replace the annual Santa Cruz county fair this year.” Wartime meant new rules, and the new strategy was that “By having several separate and distinct days for various groups, it is hoped to keep attendance down to a level below that which would bring protest from army and navy officials….10,000 persons saw last year’s fair during four days….the government has clamped down on crowds of such size.” The fair, with its kid’s bicycle day, horse pulling contests, grange presentations, military exhibitions and “grunt and groan” strongman contest was shut down for the duration of the war.

Our war has not shut down the fair this time. There will be a memorial “Moment of Silence” before, ridiculously enough, the Sha-na-na concert. There will probably be a lot of flags. But perhaps not that many more than usual. Fairs, I think, are generally patriotic, even in peacetime.

Homeland

The United States is my home. During an event like the county fair, when the smell of hay and manure pulls me nostalgically back to my childhood spent in a farming town in Colorado, the United States might even be my homeland. But, despite my own pride and rather troubled patriotism, the new Department of Homeland Security gives me the willies. Not necessarily because of its mandated function. Protecting one’s own country seems like it could be a reasonable endeavor. It is the name of the department that creeps me out.

“Homeland” sounds too much like “fatherland,” a phrase that smacks to me of the totalitarian desires of someplace like Third Reich Germany. I would infinitely prefer it if the new department were called “Domestic Security.”

I am domestic. I cook, I clean (sometimes), I can vegetables, I wear an apron. I go to the county fair, and look at the exhibits, hoping to find new recipes for the apples that become so plentiful at the farmers’ market this time of year. I participate in activities like the fair because they make me feel connected to my land, to the bounty of the harvest, to my own pioneer roots.

I want my domestic life to be secure. I want to someday own my own little flock of heirloom utility chickens. I want to feel safe: in my own bed, when I am driving across the Golden Gate Bridge, at the county fair. But I recognize that, since I live in the United States, my domestic position in the world is only supported at the expense of others. My pride is also my shame. I hope this year’s fair helps to remind me of that.

Alan Johnston

2007-07-03T19:59:00.000-07:00

Kidnapped BBC Gaza reporter Alan Johnston has been freed. So now I can take down the Alan Johnston petition link on my sidebar. I don't always think strongly about things that happen far away, but something about his story struck me. Mostly, I think, that he was doing a good job reporting on a conflict that I find repugnant in almost every way. Therefore, I would like to say thank you to Mr. Johnston, and express my hope that he returns to reporting, if he is able.

Super-Secret Staircases

2007-06-22T12:08:00.000-07:00

L’esprit d’escalier

Santa Cruz is a town of hills. Perhaps not as evocative as the hills of Rome, or the Ngong Hills of Kenya, the hills of Santa Cruz nonetheless add texture to the landscape. In Colorado, where I grew up, the streets of every small town are tree-lined—an urban forest. When I moved to Santa Cruz almost seventeen years ago, I was disturbed by the relative lack of trees. I felt exposed, like I was in a big parking lot. Over time, however, the hills and their texture came to replace trees for me as a symbol of location, a signifier of “place” over “space.” I began walking, taking long evening strolls, trying to find the places where I could look back and see the town stacked up in layers, with the Santa Cruz Mountains behind. Or places where, from a hill, I could look out across the bay and see the flat expanse interrupted by the other hills to the south, the Santa Lucia Mountains in Monterey County. Hills define neighborhoods (Beach Hill, Mission Hill) and isolated units (the City on the Hill). Walking from one hill to another is, thus, changing one’s scene, moving from one group of people to another.

On my jaunts I found the stairs. Unexpected and convenient for the walker, these stairs offered different ways to get around without using the often traffic-laden streets. Because the stairs are usually hidden from drivers, and because through conversation I found that many people did not know about them (or did not know about all of them), I started calling them “Super-Secret Staircases.” To wit: “I took the Super-Secret Staircase up from the Town Clock, then went down the one behind Squid Row.” These stairs seemed to come from a world and time when people walked more, and cars were driven less. I have imagined them peopled by the ghosts of Gibson girls, men with detachable collars, and toddlers of both sexes wearing skirts. As the walker leaves the streets, and takes the somehow tangential yet often more direct path of a stair, he or she enters a place of nostalgia and slow-down. Yet the exercise of hauling oneself up the risers makes the heartbeat and the breath come short, like in new love.

While walking these stairs, I have thought about the word “pedestrian.” Pedestrian means someone who walks; but it also can mean something unremarkable and dull—a pedestrian idea, a pedestrian piece of writing. Walking is not the same as whizzing by, and suggests the movement of “plodding along.” Yet these stairs, upon which one is a pedestrian, are not pedestrian in the other sense. Rather, they are vital and exciting, useful and direct. They cut through the excess of streets that, due to the constraints of horse-drawn or combustible engine-driven transport, must of necessity take a longer and more gradual route. They put the walker away from exhaust fumes and noise, and are, with their quiet and their views, contemplative. But they are “pedestrian” in the sense that they are also not evidently necessary: there are streets one could take instead, so why have a stair? To take the stair instead of the street is to experience both the use and uselessness of the footpath in an urban space where most people drive or ride bikes.

What, then, is the use of them? To walk on them, surely, but also not to walk on them—to drive past them and not know they are there. Ignorance of them creates another dimension, their “super-secretness,” which even those who do not know about them must nonetheless experience in their mental absence. Another aspect of these stairs is their bridging of the public and private. They are public—anyone can walk on them—and private (not everyone does). They are also “private” in a way that sidewalks generally are not, but that alleyways often are: they give view into the back sides of human habitation. On some of them, one goes by people’s side-yards, driveways, patios. Many of them, even though hidden from general view, are surprising clean, and not generally inhabited by drug-dealers, bottle-throwing drunks, or aggressive teen-agers, all of whom seem to favor the openness of places such as the sidewalk directly in front of my previous house. The stairs are, in effect, too clandestine for the fringe, who seem to want their activities to be noticed and abhorred more than hidden and ignored.

I first experienced the encapsulation of public and private on the multiple stairs that go down the side of Telegraph Hill in San Francisco, leading from Coit Tower to the Embarcadero. When I was twelve, visiting San Francisco on vacation, my father and I discovered these stairs, and I have always thought of that moment as the highlight of the trip. These stairs go through beautifully tended gardens that are owned by the city, but maintained by the residents of the hill. There, one gets the strong impression of walking through someone's backyard, an exhilarating and transgressive experience.

I have been told recently, by someone who knows construction terms, that the word "staircase" can only apply to stairs in a house or other structure. Outdoor versions are more correctly called simply "stairs." Therefore, my pet phrase, "Super-Secret Staircases," is a misnomer. I was dismayed for a while, thinking that, despite the nice ring of "Super-Secret Staircase," I might have to change my designation of these places. Then, in an act of recuperative imagination, I decided that for me these stairs are contained within a structure: my great outdoor house, the city of Santa Cruz in its entirety.

There is a phrase in French—"l’esprit d’escalier," the spirit of the stairway—that means, I am told, the sense of all the things you think you should have or might have said in an argument after the person you were arguing with has closed their door and you are walking down the stairs, leaving the scene. It has then, the feeling of regret, but also the awful cleverness of the post-facto reconstruction of a failed conversation. Remorse—which means literally “to eat again”—might be a better word than regret. In the spirit of the staircase we chew over our own words, spit them out, and replace them with ones far more piquant and savory. The esprit d'escalier is, for a remorseful person like myself, perhaps one of the chief attractions of the stairs. The existence of the stairs has, for me, continually begged the question: which failed conversation is the town of Santa Cruz itself reliving on its Super-Secret Staircases?

Tornado Bible Alley Belt

2007-05-07T14:29:00.000-07:00

I'm from eastern Colorado, and I used to have tornado dreams several times a week during the season. I did see funnel clouds, and I saw a rope tornado that touched down. I could see the dust and debris coming up from the bottom. I think I almost lost continence from a kind of wild primal fear.

Anyway, I have always been amused by the juxtaposition of Tornado Alley and the Bible Belt. Maybe the threat of being wiped off the face of the earth, as happened (sadly) in Greensburg, Kansas, makes people more interested in believing HARD in God.

It is coming around the time of year for my annual "crisis of non-faith" where I feel really shitty that I can't believe in God or a Universal Life Spirit or anything like that. I have known many people who got immense comfort from such a belief, and while I generally go about my days as a law-abiding and (I think) ethical and moral atheist, about once a year I am sad that I cannot participate in the great and moving cultural interaction of Faith. Because even though I don't think there is a God, I do know (KNOW) that faith is an operational thing between people, something that, from time to time, helps individuals and groups be more than what they could be without it. The crisis of non-faith usually resolves when I start thinking of all the bad things done in the name (names) of God (gods).

Good Times

2007-05-03T18:52:00.001-07:00

Good Times, originally uploaded by St. Blaize.

So, this appeared in the "Best of" issue of one of the local weekly rags. The news editor, for fairly obscure reasons, decided I needed to be in the issue. It's funny because there are so many interesting tour guides in this town, but since they are all affiliated with museums, colleges, state parks, etc., I guess I'm the only "independent" docent in town. Hence, the BEST.

Since I had misplaced my notes for the Beach Hill tour, I had to re-research and recreate the tour. I was worried that too many people would come, since the first time I advertised a tour publicly 114 people (That's right. One hundred fourteen.) showed up. Evidently Super-Secret Staircase Tours were an "unmet need." Who knew? I made 60 copies of my handout, just in case. But I need not have worried; only people from Free Skool showed up. Proof that no one reads the local weekly rags?

Anyway, there were 20 participants or so, the tour went well, and I didn't feel like crap for 2 hours afterwards like I usually do. The newspaper thing is flattering, and I will say that it was the largest picture I have ever seen of someone I actually know.

SATAN SATAN SATAN

2007-04-23T22:20:00.000-07:00

Sorry that this is just a continuation of the same rant, but the Bush Administration has (surprise, surprise!) been continually cutting mental health funding, including for returning veterans. NAMI has a great summary of the cuts, the BEST part of which is "School Violence Prevention – A proposed $17.226 million reduction below the FY 2007 level of $93.2 million." HA HA HA HA HA. Oh, wait. That's not funny.

Violence and Mental Illness

2007-04-19T10:19:00.000-07:00

The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) has a good perspective. For example: "Overall, the amount of violence committed by people with schizophrenia is small, and only 1 percent of the U.S. population has schizophrenia....By comparison, about 2 percent of the general population without psychiatric disorder engages in any violent behavior in a one-year period." And, "The U.S. Surgeon General has reported that the likelihood of violence by people with mental illness is low. In fact, 'the overall contribution of mental disorders to the total level of violence in society is exceptionally small.' More often, people living with mental illness are the victims of violence."

"Mental Care"

2007-04-18T08:30:00.000-07:00

So, breaking news from the BBC says that the Virginia gunman "had mental care." Well, I've had mental care, too, and I'm not about to go around shooting people.

George W. Bush has never had "mental care." Timothy McVeigh never had "mental care." As far as I know, Pol Pot never had "mental care." Yet, the fact that someone has seen a psychologist or psychiatrist is "proof" that, had we been more attentive, we just might have seen this coming and prevented that guy from shooting kids and teachers in Virginia.

We like to make the murderer into someone not like us. He was a "loner," he was Korean, he was a resident alien, he denigrates religion in his note (Oh, no! He didn't believe in God!), he had "mental care." Push him away; push him away. He's not like us; we aren't like him. Only monsters do such things.

Here, surrounded by people who have never had "mental care" but who are nonetheless fucking up the world, we have a gunman who was referred to a psychologist and all of a sudden we can say, "Ah-ha! THAT explains it all!"

I have no trenchant conclusion for this rant. I just feel sad, and, once again, marginalized. I'll be okay; it happens all the time. Even my father seems to think that if I have a fit of anger it is because my meds are out of balance. My mom can have a fit, my sister can have a fit, HE can have a fit, and they do it because they are ANGRY and UNHAPPY. But I do it because I'm CRAZY. Fun, isn't it?

Why? Or, rather, why not?

2007-04-16T21:38:00.000-07:00

After due consideration, in relation to Richard Gere (Richard Gere Out Of Tibet!), I have come to the conclusion that we in the United States burn far too few things in effigy. And, no, Dood A'Fire in the Desert does NOT count.

That is all. Thank you for your time.

Happy Easter!

2007-04-08T14:44:00.001-07:00

Easter Neville
Originally uploaded by St. Blaize.

Easter Neville. On the Easter tree.

Autoethnography

2007-04-06T15:54:00.000-07:00

I have been thinking a bit lately about writing, and wonder, since my only real genre is the essay, what I could write were I to write something longer, i.e. book-length. I have given up entirely on writing the book report that would get me my Ph.D. My advisor, when I asked him if I should complete my dissertation, said that since I was not going to be a professor, what was the point? I should just write a book.

"Just write a book." As though that were easy. I asked my friend Ray, who HAS written a book, if he thought I should write a memoir-type thing, and he replied, "I think you should start immediately upon waking up tomorrow."

Now, I have been looking at the idea of autoethnography, and wondering if the more rigorous (academic) tone of that genre would suit me even better. Then again, I am too too wedded to my own emotional process to view it with anything approaching "objectivity."

With all of this in mind, here is something I wrote, sometime in the past, that doesn't suck too much:

There was the day, when I was about 10 years old, where tired of drawing square-jawed and triangle-nosed mermaids, I went home to Mom and asked her to teach me how to draw a profile. She taught me to draw a left-facing one, and to this day I am stuck with people looking always to the west with that indomitable pioneer spirit. Mom showed me, and I practiced, bringing each piece back for criticism. Drawing the eye as a triangle rather than an almond was a revelation to me. Never more would the mermaids suffer from a Cubist duality of perspective in their penciled features. Never more would Freda, the Norse goddess who gave us Friday, have to place all of her vanity in her miraculously upswept hairdo, hoping that her coiffure would draw attention from the relentless geometry of her features. Now, although perhaps a bit cute or trite, at least the features of the goddess were regular and somewhat life-like.

With Santa Cruz in the thrall of what serves for spring here, I have been swept, at least two months too early, into the vertiginous nostalgia brought back in that season. Brought back in every season, really, but of changing character, and it is the change I notice. Here, where many things bloom or are green year round, I am not sure how just the cherry trees manage to have such sway over me. Maybe it is more the gradually increasing light, and the way it falls on the hills in the evening. Something is moving me into a sort of agitation, which I am incapable, and not really willing, to suppress.

"Don't let's ask for the moon. We have the stars."

2007-04-01T19:17:00.001-07:00

Today, I meant to go and garden. Mom and I have a community garden plot that is about 250 square feet bigger than my house. I think. I have to measure it again. So there I was, in my overalls and my hat, and I just couldn't do it.

Instead, I came home and looked for a picture of me and a picture of Bette Davis that might confirm the idea (which more than one person has put forward) that I look like her. Looking like her would be a good thing, because she was beautiful. Odd, but beautiful. I found a potential comparison, but, still in my overalls, I'm not sure I really "felt" the comparison.

Most of the time I go around in the world thinking I am invisible. This is a helpful point of view, because it means I can go to the store covered in mud and not care, because I figure no one sees me. It makes me "brave" in one of the ways Becky uses the word. However, once in awhile, I wonder how I look on the outside. Today has been one of those days, at least for brief moments.

WWPPD Mark 2

2007-03-26T20:14:00.001-07:00

WWPPD, originally uploaded by St. Blaize.

I decided that the layout I had chosen from flickr was inadequate for this particular image, so I'm posting it again. Yet, I am not removing the older one, because futuregirl commented on it. Did you hear me? FUTUREGIRL COMMENTS ON MY BLARG! I AM IMPORTANT!

WWPPD

2007-03-25T20:32:00.001-07:00

WWPPD
Originally uploaded by St. Blaize.

I made a motivational poster, for no reason except that I could. The idea, unfortunately, is not mine. But, hey! I was the one who did the ACTUAL work of, um, finding the image using Google then using flickr toys to make the poster. It was hard work. Really, really hard work. Kind of like the war on terror. Oops! Did I just say "war on terror"? WWPPD in this kind of situation? Gotta go!

Supersaturated Abandoned Weinerschnitzel

2007-03-19T23:33:00.001-07:00

Supersaturated Abandoned Weinerschnitzel
Originally uploaded by St. Blaize.

I've been enjoying messing with supersaturation, just using Picasa, because it's so easy monkeys could use it. And I'm a monkey. So here, my friends, is the abandoned Weinerschnitzel. I didn't know they could BE abandoned. I thought that once they were done with doing their "business" they shot back off into space. You know, where they came from.

Oh, and the real reason I posted this is because I finally figured out how to associate my BLARG with my flickr stuff. It only took me a few months. That's fast, right?

Linus

2007-03-17T10:30:00.000-07:00

Linus the Octupus has come to live at my house. Linus is the first object I have received as a direct consequence of BLARGING. Or, rather, of commenting on other people's BLARGS. Maybe it doesn't quite count, because I know Bethany In Real Life, but I still got Linus because I commented on Bethany's blarg anniversary, and she drew my name from all the names of people who commented on that post.

Whatever the reason, Linus is now in residence, and has made friends with the other members of my Stuffed Toy Revolutionary Squad, which consists of Woolfrog and SubSubComandante Marcos (they're both from Chiapas, Mexico).

On a different note, since I tend to spend most of my days in various states of grubbiness, it's nice every once in awhile to dress up, though nothing can alleviate the wretched state of my fingernails. The red object hanging from my shower rod is a clothespin holder that I got from Becky and Brindon one time when they were selling stuff at the Antique Fair downtown. The dress was given to my by my friend Katja at a time in my life when I thought I would never ever look pretty ever again. The dress made me rethink that idea and, coupled with kind words from my mother, was a key component in ending a six-month-long "nervous breakdown" I had seven years ago. It is the best dress, in that it 1. never needs ironing, and 2. fits me whether I am weighing 172 pounds or 158 pounds. I think it's magic.

Spam Poem

2007-02-10T18:56:00.000-08:00

I wrote a poem using the subject lines of junk email, culled from my junk filter.

It is a thing of beauty; hence, a joy forever.

Say Theyre Crueler Eggers

A buteo as prayerful
He matrimony of preposterous
Is minneapolis so nonchalant
Of so hangmen
A monotonous or robertson
it laugh
is decide
Is in relieve

go profound
My fermion at runnymede
My voluntarily maya retrogression
skinny bubble bath
placing unkind
varigated cough syrup

twisted alchemist
curmudgeonly alchemist
chic cab driver
psychotic pit viper
so-called dust bunny
alderman desire
unsightly food stamp

He concentrate or barbarian
My vestal or scavenge
her corridor
Are noon of castro

molten mating ritual
With an bauxite
his abandoned
Be deterring to fiction
To go marksman

Accepting your application
as ever

Can't be a lover anymore
Of of desuetude

Six Surprising Things

2007-01-27T21:22:00.000-08:00

Green Kitchen tagged me with this topic.

I have a bit of a problem, in that I really don't think there is much about me that would be surprising to anyone who knows me well. A stranger would also find nothing surprising about me, because he or she wouldn't really care. Weird, maybe; surprising, no. Therefore, I imagine that the ostensible audience of a post concerning "six surprising things" about me is people who sort of know me a bit. Since I think that the people who read my BLARG either know me well or are strangers, I guess my only real audience is futuregirl, who doesn't know me well (yet), but is not a stranger, and who reads my BLARG (Q.E.D.). So, to Alice: Enjoy!

1. When my first boyfriend dumped me and I had my first nervous breakdown, I used to call his house at all hours (which isn't that surprising) and then play "I - feel - feel like - I am - in a burning building - and I gotta go. Cause I - I feel - feel like - I am - in a burning building - and I gotta go" from "Let X=X" on Laurie Anderson's Big Science Then I would hang up. And do it again. And again.

2. I have been known (though not lately) to go every week to the local Spooky Dance (i.e. goth night) wearing all black with platform boots and, once there, throw myself about to loud music, casting out demons. Becky says I dance like a broken doll.

3. One of the chapters in my never-completed dissertation analyzed the media accounts of the execution of Timothy McVeigh vis-à-vis Elizabethan and Jacobean revenge drama and sixteenth- and seventeenth-century public execution.

4. I have handled a document signed by Queen Elizabeth I. It was in English, not Latin, but was still in secretary hand, which made it hard to read even in English. Luckily, I had been trained to read that kind of handwriting, a skill that actually still comes in handy when deciphering doctors' handwriting. This document was at the Folger Shakespeare Library, where I was doing research and taking a course on secretary hand. The manuscript archivist didn't know about this particular document, which I found in a box with other not-very-well-catalogued items.

5. Although my mother denies it, I know for a fact that I only took a bath once a week when I was a kid. I may have changed underwear slightly more frequently, but not that much more frequently. The reason I know this is that my well-meaning (but, in this case, cruel) third grade teacher, Mrs. McClenndon, had us go around a circle and say how often we changed our underwear. I, luckily, was not first and, as the others revealed their underpants truth, I realized that "once a week" was Not a Good Answer. So I said every other day, because I wasn't so much a liar as to say every day, which seemed to be the preferred answer. Or maybe I did say every day, after Jeff Sidler was chided for every-other-day panty rotation. Whatever. I didn't feel personally bad about my infrequent bathing and underpants changing; I was prepubescent, and my outer clothes were clean, so it's not like I smelled. I was just embarrassed to have to talk about it in front of others whose standards were clearly different.

6. I like riding around in the car with Michelle because she has been listening to the same Best of Billy Joel album for at least a year, and her older son sings along now. He appears to be undamaged by the experience.

Planet Crêpe

2007-01-21T21:05:00.000-08:00

Green Kitchen has evoked my knowledge of made-up places to describe Planet Crêpe, home (or at least headquarters) of Spaceboy. I have been doing some research, and am finding that some of the material on Spaceboy (who, despite his boyishness, is quite important) is classified. While I am waiting on my access pass from the higher-ups (or His Nibs, as I like to call them), I can at least tell you what Spaceboy is up against in his fight for the goodness of batter, nutella, and all that is right in the universe.

Planet Crêpe is located, much to its dismay, in the Gamma Quadrant. Now, a word on the Gamma Quadrant: this Quadrant is a frightening and confusing place. Deep in this sector, the planets from whence nougat* is mined
nestle closely (astronavigationally-wise) with the planets that are the respective sources of such Earth cultural phenomena (loosely-termed) as Kenny G,
Chia Pets(tm),
and supply-side economics.
Huge space freighters trawl this part of the universe, collecting enormous cargoes of nougat, etc., which--after space flights the like of which would implode the brain of any Earthling--the crews of said freighters then dump on an unsuspecting and fully interpellated population here, ON EARTH.

It is unclear whether this cargo dumping is controlled by and paid for by some global cabal of such secrecy that it makes the rules for Fight Club seem as innocuous as the instructions on the back of a box of Tampax. If this were so, one shudders to think in what coin the aliens are being paid. Virgins? (Always in short supply, therefore likely impracticable.) Anime? (Of no evident value, therefore potentially interesting to our nougat-purveying alien "brethren.") Panda bears? (Since they won't even HAVE SEX TO SAVE THEIR OWN SPECIES, perhaps they, too, are from the Gamma Quadrant.)

Or, on the other hand, are the aliens of the Gamma Quadrant merely dumping space freighter-loads of shillelaghs,** nougat, Kenny G, Chia Pets(tm), and supply-side economics on Earth as a sociological experiment the parameters and labyrinthine logic of which would implode the brain of any Earthling.

Or, are they just trying to implode our brains?

I am too depressed by these various scenarios to create a proper manifesto moment for this analysis. I leave it to Spaceboy on Planet Crêpe to shape our future fate, the fate of the Gamma Quadrant, and the fate of the galaxy in sum. Once I find out what the heck he's doing about it, I'll let you know.

*Since no one has EVER given my a decent (by "decent" I mean "can be heard in mixed company") explanation of what the hell nougat is, I believe it comes from space.
**Don't ask about the shillelaghs; they just crept in.

The Best Indian Restaurant Ever

2007-01-13T15:58:00.000-08:00

I was going to comment on futuregirl's BLARG, but the comment became too involved. Hence, this post.

My parents went to the Peace Corps in Kenya my last year of college. When I graduated in 1990, my sister and I went and visited them. After 5 days in London, and a flight that took us through a layover in Muscat, Oman (an experience that would require an entirely different post to describe), I remember seeing my tanned and skinny parents waving to us from on top of the building of the Jomo Kenyatta airport as we walked in from the tarmac.

We took the bus into Nairobi from the airport. While we were on the bus, a riot started in the city, and people were pushing onto the bus, trying to get away from the rioting. My mom helpfully said, "Oh, yeah. I thought there might be problems today." Thanks for the heads-up, Mom. When we got to somewhere she sort of recognized, we pushed our way off of the bus. My sister was in front of me, and I put my arm around her front, grabbed my mom's wrist behind me, and used my entire weight and the weight of our backpacks to PUSH us through the panicky people trying to get on the bus. Then we walked to the hotel where the Peace Corps people generally stayed in Nairobi, the Hotel Pigali, which was, in some ways, a shithole, and, in some ways, the best hotel I've ever been in: narrow beds with inadequate blankets in rooms with poor mosquito screens on the one hand; 7-foot long porcelain bathtubs on the other. I wallowed like a hippo in the hot water, once the hot water came. I couldn't find a picture of the Hotel Pigali, but this picture gives an idea of the age and style.

That night, the streets were empty, except for truck-loads of soldiers toting semi-automatic weapons. Nonetheless, some other (much younger than my parents) Peace Corps people convinced us that it would be a really great idea to walk through the deserted streets to an Italian restaurant near the City Hall. I was cringingly aware that we could only walk around during this effective curfew because we were white. The food at the restaurant was weird, as one might expect for an Italian place in an African capital city. However, it was there that I was first introduced to the wonders of Kenyan-style tea, served with milk and sugar already incorporated.

The next day, we got on public transit for the 12-hour journey to my parents site, in Kilgoris, on the western escarpment of the Great Rift Valley. Once again, that story, and the story of staying with them there, would require another post. Or, indeed, a novella. Suffice to say that when we returned to Nairobi, first as a stop-over before our train ride to Mombasa, then as a stop-over before our budget mini-bus safari, then as a stop-over before Shelley and I went home, we ate at a place called Slush. It was near the City Market, possibly on Biashara Street.

The outside looked quite a bit like this:
The inside looked like a cross between a McDonald's and a sterile ice cream parlor. We ate upstairs, by the windows overlooking the market. The name "Slush" came, evidently, from the astonishing panoply of milkshakes they served, including ones flavored with saffron. The milkshakes were the only really "expensive" thing on the menu, and could run as much as, say, $1.50. The huge glasses of passion fruit juice were more reasonably priced at 50 cents or so. You could also get pizza and hamburgers (of a strange sort), and, best of all, Indian food. The Best Indian Food I Have Ever Eaten®. Potato bhajias, vegetable samosas, chutneys, and things I can't remember, but that somehow, there, in the quick equatorial dusk that seemed to press in with the strangely soft air through the open windows, with my strange family, were just really really satisfying.

The Suffering Olympics

2007-01-02T12:16:00.000-08:00

I really dislike the comparison of suffering. When people say to me, "Oh, I've had problems, but not as bad as yours," I reply, "It's not a CONTEST." I did not medal in the Suffering Olympics, nor have I won the prize in the Suffering Sweepstakes.

I believe that suffering is an activity, and that there is no real way to measure it. As it says in La Jetee "il soufre," "he suffers." Suffering is a fact. We all experience and engage in it at times.

My friend, for example, has gout.

I refuse to believe that his suffering is any less agonizing than the suffering I am having due to melancholia.
Or the suffering I experience because of mixed mania.

My gout-ridden friend might disagree, but he's a tough guy, and what amounts to basically kidney-stones-of-the-toe isn't going to faze him.

I suffer; you suffer; we suffer. In the end, it's just not that interesting, and certainly does not qualify as something we should be having a contest about. Then again, perhaps some things are worse than others. [Warning: Don't click on the next link if you are in an emotionally susceptible state.] Can our enemies suffer? Or does our hatred for them preclude their suffering, because we refuse to suffer for them or with them?

Maybe there is a gold medal after all, but no one will win it because that one judge is always giving a 7.9 to what was a perfect 10 performance.

Merry Christmas from Neville

2006-12-18T22:30:00.000-08:00

Neville likes abandoned buildings. So do I.

The Subcontinent Blushes, Furiously

2006-12-11T08:56:00.000-08:00

So, for the last four days, the "most emailed" story on the BBC news website has been "Condoms 'too big' for Indian men." So now the world is laughing at the organic baby carrot-dicked gentlemen of the Subcontinent. An entire region of a BILLION people, and half of them are the world's laughingstock. Repeatedly. Usually a popular story only remains popular for half a day at most on the BBC website. This, as I said, has been number one since first published on Friday.

My friend thought that, given the inventiveness and entrepeneurial spirit that characterizes the current Indian economy, surely someone in India would have come up with condoms especially designed to better fit Indian penises, and then no one would have needed to know. In the absence of this, and despite the constant mantra of "it's not the meat; it's the motion" (a phrase undoubtedly invented by a smaller fellow), the men of the Indian Subcontinent cannot help but feel the sting of worldwide infamity.

Krishna Condoms. It would have worked.

A non-Super-Secret Staircase Tour

2006-12-07T22:41:00.000-08:00

For anyone who is interested, I and two other folks will be giving a tour of the Branciforte neighborhood of Santa Cruz on Sunday, December 9th. We will start at 2 p.m. in front of Branciforte Elementary.

Here is the description from the Santa Cruz Free Skool.
The Bad Side of Town, with Ben, Blaize, and Sylvia
What happened to Branciforte Villa, the only villa established in California during the Spanish Colonial period? Where are the footprints and remains of this eighteeth-century settlement, and why don't we know more about it? Join us on a one- to two-hour walking tour of this area of Santa Cruz, and learn with us about the social, archeological, and political history of the Branciforte area.

Book Report

2006-11-30T20:57:00.000-08:00

Before I begin, a couple of more spam email subjects:
"re: size your meat!" Uh, should that be "resize your meat"? And if it should be, does it really mean what I wish to god it didn't mean?
"But that language hasn't always served the comm". No, I guess it hasn't. Or whatever.

I like coming up with my own back-cover blurbs for books I dislike. I read some Patricia Cornwell because my mom had some and I was over at her house and borrowed them. I found the main character, medical examiner Kay Scarpetta, repulsive. She is touchy and vain and alcoholic and takes stupid risks and has bad taste in men. I guess all the allegedly great Italian food she fictionally cooks is supposed to make me like her, but I don't. In fact, after reading a few (I like to give an author a fair shot, generally) I told my mom that the series had "The least likeable protaganist since Mein Kampf." (Just so you know, I don't generally lightly toss around Hitler references, except in jest. I am not one of those people who refers to others with the slightest tendency to be nasty as "Nazis." One time, on instant messaging, my boyfriend called me a "grammar Nazi." And I said, "Oh, yeah. Because I have burned six million Jews in my grammar oven." Please.)

When I actively dislike books that other people (a LOT of other people) seem to think are great, I feel like an outcast. I think I used to feel superior in that I preferred to read Middlemarch by George Eliot instead of Craptastic Crapula by Stephen King. Oh, hell, I still feel superior about that. But, lately, I have read two series for "young adults" that were well-reviewed and popular, and have found them to be right down there with Craptastic Crapula in terms of their plots, their writing, their characterization, their, well, just about everything. And I don't feel superior; rather, I am mystified as to why other people like these things. It makes me feel like a freak who belongs to a species other than human.

So, the two series are the (yet-to-be-finished) trilogy by Christopher Paolini (if you haven't seen some "young adult" carrying one of his two books around you either a) don't know any young adults, b) live underwater, or c) are blind, and are thus experiencing this blarg via some sort of your-computer-reads-aloud-to-you technology) and the His Dark Materials trilogy of Philip Pullman.

The first series is written by some home-schooled kid from Montana, and is the most ridiculous amalgamation of The Lord of the Rings, Ursula LeGuin's Wizard of Earthsea trilogy+one, and Anne McCaffrey's perennially-worsening Dragonrider series. Ridiculous because both extant books combine the worst of Tolkien's epic verbosity (Hey! Numbskulls! This is in EPIC! An EPIC, I TELL YOU!) and McCaffrey's poor continuity, and at the same time lack Tolkien's erudition, McCaffrey's inventiveness (in the first books; the later ones appear to be contributions to the Craptastic Crapula series at which so many authors have tried their hand), and LeGuin's character development, moral center, and general awesomeness.

"But, he's just a kid!" you might say. Yes, he's just a kid, and he therefore DESERVES AN EDITOR WHO WILL TELL HIM THAT THE NEXT TIME A "SINGLE TEAR" TRICKLES DOWN SOMEONE'S CHEEK HE OR SHE (THE EDITOR) WILL SET FIRE TO THE TYPESCRIPT. I am not joking; in the second book a single tear trickled down someone's cheek at least six times. I lost count after that. The editor should also get a bullhorn, stand behind our friend Christopher as he works, and shout through it "STEP AWAY FROM THE THESAURUS" at regular intervals. Either Knopf Books sucks, or their editors all died in some kind of plague (maybe hantavirus?). So, they should either be ashamed of themselves, or I should send them a sympathy card and a wreath (how would such a card go? "Dear Knopf, I am sorry to hear about the massive hantavirus-induced editor die-off at your company. It is sad for the families, and for all of your readers who believe that when people cry, they generally cry more than one tear. If it's only worth one tear, then it's not worth crying over; similarly, if a person is so strong as to only let one tear fall, surely that person has the willpower to make NO TEARS FALL AT ALL. Respectfully, A Friend). I fear for the next book. And I wonder how much the upcoming movie version of the first book will make strong and right-thinking men and women want to shed single tears.

Pullman's series is less egregious, in that he actually seems to know both the denotations and connotations of the words he uses, and in that his plot is more nearly original. However, his two main characters are annoying; much as I might have wanted to like them, I was thwarted by the fact that they were conniving, murderous, wise beyond their years (in the worst made-for-TV-movie style), and motivated by mysterious forces. Not mysterious forces in the world of the book, which they are also motivated by, but by ACTUALLY mysterious forces. Like, I have no idea why the hell these kids do more than half of the things they do.

Also, the book is totally anti-Christian. You would think that, since I'm an atheist, I would be all over that like a cheap suit or a bad toupee. But I prefer my anti-Christian literature to have more reason, and less pre-teen sex. Oh, yes, you heard me. The main characters, who are twelve at the end of the trilogy, are referred to as "lovers." And, evidently, their "love" SAVES THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE. Now THAT is hot. My love can't even save a used stick of gum. Maybe I'm just jealous. Or, maybe, I think that if you are going to have three books that are all about, in the end, killing God, you should have something more believable than the idea that pre-teen sex saves the universe. Hell, maybe pre-teen sex regularly saves the universe, and I just don't know it, because I'm ignorant like that.

Anyway, these books won a lot of prizes. And I read all three, because I like to finish what I start (no, I don't. I just didn't have anything else out from the library that I wanted to read instead. And the mysterious forces were sort of soothing, in a way), and I thought they were interesting in some ways, but overall heavy-handed. Like when you are re-reading along in the Narnia series, as a adult, and you can just about swallow the whole Aslan-as-Jesus stuff in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, but you really, really don't want to read The Last Battle again, and not because Narnia gets destroyed, but because since Armageddon is already a metaphor, you don't see the point in having a kid's book make a metaphor of it. Heavy-handed.

Even though they go on and on about how bad it is to teach kids an anti-Christian message, and they call the books "blasphemy", I think that the Catholic Culture website actually has some good points to make about some of the problems with the books, not least of which "The first two volumes of the trilogy--despite their designation as young-adult fare--should also be considered strictly adult fiction, given their high quotient of torture and violence." I should like these books: they bash the Church, they elevate science, God dies, whatever. But the anti-Christian message is both crude and incomplete. There is still a whole bunch of spiritual mumbo-jumbo about the soul and the spirit. Also "dark matter" is the same thing as "angels" but is also (somehow) the same thing that causes consciousness, which allegedly distinguishes "people" (some of the conscious creatures in some of the worlds in Pullman's trilogy aren't human) from animals. I really don't see how spiritualism is somehow all that much better than organized religion. I mentioned I'm an atheist, right? I guess I'm what you would call a Complete and Total Atheist, not a New Age Believe in Oneness or Some Other Mystical Crap but Not in God Per Se Atheist. Therefore, for me, Pullman's replacement of God with some other spiritual stuff is scarcely helpful.

Okay, now I have slipped into a tirade (you may have thought that it happened earlier, but you were wrong. I know my tirades when I see them. The rest was just, like, opinions, man). So, I guess I'm done. I wished I could have liked these books. But they seemed so, so eager to get across a "message" that I really found them tiresome. Especially since I just re-read To Kill a Mockingbird, which actually does get across a message, but is subtle and well-written and just really really great.

Excellence in Titling

2006-11-27T15:23:00.000-08:00

I'm interested in urban exploration, though I am too law-abiding to actually do much of the trespassing-on-abandoned-sites-and-taking-groovy-pictures type of exploration, as seen on the Dark Passage or Ars Subterranea sites. You see, I, like Socrates, would rather die than break the law of my land. That's not true. Actually, I'm generally just too chickenshit to do things like train-hop and trespass.

Today I found the best-named urban exploration site ever: Friends of Vast Industrial Concrete Kafkaesque Structures. This cannot be topped, I don't care what anybody else says.

Oh, I guess I should put titles on these post things

2006-11-25T21:27:00.000-08:00

I tend to be fairly in love with the varying trends of email spam subject lines. For a long time it was aaaallllll aaabbouuuuuut exxtraaaa letteeeerrs, lord knows why (actual example, because I actually saved some subject lines from that era: "Thiis is whaaaaaaat the poooorn staaaaaaars use". Iiiiiit iiiiis? Whoooo kneeeeeew?). Lately, there has been a trend of "It's me, (name of person that they hope is somehow familiar so that you will open the spam, but that is usually something like "Chrysogen" or "Axella" because the random name generators seem to be either from the 19th century or an alternate-reality England)."

Today I got:
"Re: christmas schistos"
Okay, so, it's getting on towards Christmas. It makes sense to try and fool me with a holiday reference. But SCHISTOS? You know, like Schistosoma mansoni, the parasite that comes from human poop and grows in snails and causes bilharzia and makes it so you can't walk barefoot anywhere near the shore of Lake Victoria in Kenya. Yeah, I think I really want to read THAT email. And I love the "Re:", as though I sent mail with that subject and they are just replying to it. Happy Christmas Schistos, from My Family to Yours!

I also got:
"logos Root"
This one was really funny to me, but only because I have read too much Neal Stephenson. Or, maybe, not enough Neal Stephenson. Which reminds me, I am obviously really behind the times but I just learned from the interweb this week that the "cool" name for one genre of literature I enjoy is "steampunk."

This one is a thing of beauty:
"Burroughs truly feared a word virus, an idea he"
I think the thing I like best about it is that the sentence is incomplete. Guess the word virus got it!

Others:
"nitrogen fixer" (I guess I do need some compost. How did they know?)
"Re: incompatibl" (Another "Re:", but this one suggesting I can't spell.)

And, finally:
"Be strong,"
Oh, I'll try. Believe me; I'll try.

2006-10-20T18:39:00.000-07:00

Books I have read this month, so far.

Elizabeth George (she's no Dorothy Sayers, but she entertains, and has an actual vocabulary)

For the Sake of Elena
In the Presence of the Enemy
A Great Deliverance (Even though this is one of her earliest, I think that it is one of the best.)
Missing Joseph (Also very good; has a lot of interesting stuff about marriage.)

Alice Hoffman (Becky really likes her, and introduced her to me. I got on a roll, because I had a bunch around the house and didn't have time to go to the library for anything else.)

The River King
Here on Earth
Seventh Heaven
Second Nature (I liked this one especially)

Some of the essays in The Best American Travel Writing 2001 ed. Paul Theroux. I enjoy the one on Charles Manson's hideout in the Panamint Mountains ("Desert Hideaway" by Ian Frazier), Scott Anderson's "As Long As We Were Together, Nothing Bad Could Happen to Us," and Brad Wetzler's "Is Just Like Amerika" on the "tramping" hobby in the Czech Republic.

I read Melissa Bank's The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing because it was in a bag of books my mom gave me and that I had in my car and I wanted something to read during a break at work. It was surprisingly not super-terrible. I liked the first parts better than the later parts.

I'm reading The Cloister Walk by Kathleen Norris, because I have a weird desire to go here: New Camaldoli Hermitage in Big Sur . Who knows why. Because it's cheap and nobody talks to you?

Oh, and I got some Dorothy Sayers, since I mentioned her. The Five Red Herrings and Murder Must Advertise. I'm reading that now.

I had a funny conversation today at the feed store with a woman who has two dogs: Hamlet and Portia. Hamlet eats Portia's shit, so I made the GEEKIEST JOKE EVER by saying "The quality of feces is not strained." I think that I was just so amazed that I remember anything about Shakespeare that I almost wet myself, and the joke was a kind of personal Depends garment to keep me dry. Or something.

2006-09-29T18:16:00.000-07:00

Why does it bug me when people use the phrase "my muse"? I mean, there are nine of them. Why can't someone have a personal one?

Oh, wait. BECAUSE WE ALL HAVE TO SHARE THOSE SAME NINE. So, you don't get to have one of your OWN. Unless you're selfish. Which I am. So, I choose Melpomene. She's MINE. You can't have her!

2006-09-25T10:55:00.001-07:00

What I have been reading this month:
Mary Morris, Nothing to Declare: Memoirs of a Woman Traveling Alone
Moon Publications, Northern California Handbook
Tony and Evan Worobiec, Ghosts in the Wilderness: Abandoned America
Jerry Kobalenko, The Horizontal Everest
P.D. James, Devices and Desires
S.J. Perleman, short pieces (duh)
P.G. Wodehouse, Life with Jeeves
Edith Wharton, Old New York: False Dawn (The 'Forties)
Elizabeth George, With Noone as Witness

The Wharton has one of the best descriptions of a sweaty fat man I can imagine ever having been written: "Mr. Raycie was a monumental man. His extent in height, width, and thickness was so nearly the same that whichever way he was turned one had an almost equally broad view of him; and evey inch of that mighty circumference was so exquisitely cared for that to a farmer's eye he might have suggested a great agricultural estate of which not an acre is untilled. Even his baldness, which was in proportion to the rest, looked as if it received a special daily polish; and on a hot day his whole person was like some wonderful example of the costliest irrigation. There was so much of him, and he had so many planes, that it was fascinating to watch each runnel of moisture follow its own particular watershed. Even on his large fresh-looking hands the drops divided, trickling in different ways from the ridges of the fingers; and as for his forehead and temples, and the raised cushion of cheek beneath each of his lower lids, every one of these slopes had its own particular stream, its hollow pools and sudden cataracts; and the sight was never unpleasant, because his whole vast bubbling surface was of such a clean and hearty pink, and the exuding moisture so perceptibly flavoured with expensive eau de Cologne and the best French soap."