BLOG SUPERGROUP

I hate to be a shameless self promoter

2008-02-16T02:17:00.001-05:00

but not enough to not post this.

I have a new blog where I review anything. Check it out if you like.

http://reviewsreviewsreviews.blogspot.com

ahem

2008-01-25T12:28:00.000-05:00

Some of us have moved; others have stayed put.
Some of us have been very busy finishing semesters; others have been lazy.
Some of us have (temporarily) run out of topic ideas; others are shy about being the first one back.
Some of us are just bored.

We still like you, Dear Readers, and miss your comments.
But what, at this point, can bring you back? We've proven ourselves shamefully unreliable. We apologize for that, but make no promises to change our behavior in the future.

Would you like a new format? A change of pace? To participate more? To find new blog authors? It's okay if you do. But tell us, please.

Because every time I see this blog listed on my profile, I have to click on it just to make sure there's nothing new. It sort of feels like a rotted toenail that I can't stop picking at, but am afraid to rip off, just in case it spontaneously comes back to life.

I don't want the Supergroup to be a rotted toenail.

Do you?

Star Wars Holiday Special

2008-01-13T13:14:00.001-05:00

Someone showed me this video last night and I can't think of a better place to share it. According to my friend Mark, this is completely legit and his brother in law has the full 2-hour tape. Also, here's a website that gives a little bit of background on the cinematic masterpiece that is the Star Wars Holiday Special.

And since we're already talking about Star Wars I'd like to share one of my new favorite videos, Star Wars trumpet solo. Stacey Hedger, you are a true American hero!

resolved: that those super-wealthy 20-somethings need to get over themselves.

2008-01-03T00:24:00.000-05:00

thanks for the all critics topic stephanie! this ought to generate some comments...
here are my suggestions:

everyone running for president on either side: have a mad drunken party together before the primaries. let the press in once everyone’s good and sauced.

george lucas: redo the last few star wars, and hire a director this time. maybe kevin smith? that would be fun.

al sharpton: realize that it’s not all because you’re black. some of it is because you’re an idiot.

michael vick: pit yourself against one of your pitbulls. oh yeah, and the loser gets shot.

bill watterson: give us more calvin & hobbes!

will smith: pat yourself on the back, my man! america has an actual american manly action hero again. (anyone else notice that our macho actors lately are euros/aussies?)

europe/australia: keep turning them out – we could use more macho action heroes.

whiny welfare people: stop whining about it, get into rehab, and then get a job. then actually work hard at the job. even burger-flippers and janitors get promoted if they flip burgers or janite with a good attitude.

hollywood writers on strike: stay there. then maybe the couch potatoes will move their asses and work on their own getting-healthier resolutions.

tippi hendron: save more critters. yay for shambala!

paris hilton: shop at kmart – after all, you’re only inheriting $5million now – got to tighten that budget...

the dog whisperer: go back to mexico for a while and then set a good example by emigrating- legally this time. i’m sure you could get a sponsor without too much trouble.

kim jong-il: watch team america: world police.

neil gaiman: i agree with stephanie. write the book. please.

on a side note, for christmas 2003 i was given a latchhook set. i resolved to complete the thing the next year (2004). i’m proud to report that i hooked the last latch at about 11:47pm on the 31st. this year i started a cross-stitch project. if we’re still blogging in 2012, i’ll let you know how it goes.

New Year

2008-01-02T16:08:00.000-05:00

New Year's Resolution #1 - Try to post more often and on time!

But what fun is making New Year's resolutions for yourself? It only ends in disappointment and shame when you don't follow through, and let's be honest, how many of us really keep up with them after the first week? So - I've decided that this week's theme is writing resolutions for other people. It can be people you know, people you don't, celebrities, pets, whatever. (This was actually inspired in part by something done in Sunday school, where there was a top 10 list of resolutions for fictional characters). I figured this would be a nice fun, easy post for us to do - as many will probably be hung over tomorrow (and maybe a day or two after depending on the binges going on tonight)

These are in no particular order

10. Tom Hanks: Will play some truly despicable character. One that has no redeeming quality that ultimately makes the audience like him anyways.

9. Tim Burton: Will cast someone other than Johnny Depp in next movie. (Don't get me wrong - I love Johnny Depp, but there has to be some other actor that can pull off weird, dark, and brooding!)

8. Jessica Simpson: Will have vocal chords removed to prevent any further butchering of perfectly lovely songs. (I practically had a stroke every time I heard her rendition of "Baby, It's Cold Outside" while I was shopping) Everyone just watches her on mute anyway, right?

7. Neil Gaiman - Will finish and print new book! (No pressure Neil - you're worth the wait!)

6. Britney Spears and anyone related to Britney Spears (through marriage and blood) - Will have vasectomy/hysterectomy to keep from further polluting and dragging down the gene pool.

5. Han Solo: Will change name to not sound like a euphemism for masturbation. And maybe bag a chick other than one that is incestuous/has pastries for hair.

4. Stephen Colbert : Will try to reign it in a little - there is such a thing as being too funny. (Who am I kidding? No there's not!)

3. Angelina Jolie & Brad Pitt: Will try to adopt the whole of Africa and Asia by the end of the year. As well as singlehandedly rebuilding New Orleans (they're going to need somplace to put all of those kids).

2. Steve Jobs : Will try to come out with technology people can actually afford to buy right away, rather than 3 years down the line when something better has come out. (Oh - but keep making the Mac vs. PC commercials - love 'em!)

1. The Shins - Will try to get back into the independent music scene - they are too good for the general population to enjoy. ( I almost puked when I heard one of their songs playing in Burger King one day)

Ok, so a pathetic attempt at humor. I'm sick - again, so it's a little sub-par. For those of you not feeling this particular topic, why not take Sean's suggestion and make predictions for the coming year.

Merry Christmas!

2007-12-25T16:06:00.000-05:00

Merry Christmas Everyone! Hope everyone's having a wonderful time - so wonderful, that they don't feel like writing posts this week, right? I promise I'll post a topic by next Monday.

(Image taken from glennjamesphotography.com)
Also, let me take the time to say goodbye to Jane, and I hope you get better. Jane leaves in 6 days, and is sick, and may not have much access to the internet over in Kyrgysztan, but hopefully we'll still hear from her here or at her own blog.

word on the street

2007-12-21T20:19:00.000-05:00

in san diego, the word is "do". there are so many, many interests, focuses, life paths, whatevers here, yet i scarcely find someone who is not passionate about "doing" whatever it is they do. i don't necessarily mean in the career sense - some people slack off with fervor. and people do so much! many of them have the means to not need to either. for example, yesterday i spoke to a soccer mom who also works full time at a preschool, is about to complete a masters degree, and volunteers hours every week at a church sunday school program. and she loves it! another person i know works full time as an accountant, just finished his economics degree, is working on a private pilot's license, and still has time for surfing and target shooting.
i don't remember so much being done by anyone anywhere else i've been. so yeah. do.

then there's me. i have no idea what my word is. i've been called crazy, dorky, creative, smart-butt, animal freak, and a bunch of other stuff. i'd almost have to go with "confused" except that i'm mostly comprised of a bunch of lucid moments that just don't go together - like flipping through channels on tv.
ok, so i'm a channel-changer (if hyphenated words count).

Grease is the word

2007-12-19T16:27:00.000-05:00

But not my word.

It's funny that this is the topic, because I was thinking about something similar the other day. If this were the era in Pride and Prejudice (Elizabethan? Victorian? I should know this...), my one word would be "accomplished", I think. Well, here's an excerpt:

``All young ladies accomplished! My dear Charles, what do you mean?''

``Yes all of them, I think. They all paint tables, cover skreens, and net purses. I scarcely know any one who cannot do all this, and I am sure I never heard a young lady spoken of for the first time, without being informed that she was very accomplished''

``Your list of the common extent of accomplishments,'' said Darcy, ``has too much truth. The word is applied to many a woman who deserves it no otherwise than by netting a purse, or covering a skreen. But I am very far from agreeing with you in your estimation of ladies in general. I cannot boast of knowing more than half a dozen, in the whole range of my acquaintance, that are really accomplished.''

``Nor I, I am sure,'' said Miss Bingley.
`
`Then,'' observed Elizabeth, ``you must comprehend a great deal in your idea of an accomplished women.''

``Yes; I do comprehend a great deal in it.''

``Oh! certainly,'' cried his faithful assistant, ``no one can be really esteemed accomplished, who does not greatly surpass what is usually met with. A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages, to deserve the word; and besides all this, she must possess a certain something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions, or the word will be but half deserved.''

``All this she must possess,'' added Darcy, ``and to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading.''

Painting, music, singing, modern languages, extensive reading - I'm there! Mr. Darcy, I'm yours! Though "accomplished" was really only a status wealthier women could claim, so odds are, my word would have been "homely" and I would have been someone's chambermaid somewhere.

So my word? I would love to say "witty", but does that really describe me and all that I do or think about? I think "creative" would certainly fit, but I like the term "artsy" a little more. (Dubbed by one of my coworkers upon seeing my self-given henna tattoo) It conveys a little more of an attitude, though it may also have the connotation of "flighty", which I would not attribute to myself. "Creative" can be applied to all sorts of people, from Martha Stewart-like crafters to Van Gogh, but "artsy" implies more of a way of being. Since I do more than just paint or draw - like sing, act, write, and um - other stuff - it fits.

Is "artsy" the word for Lake City? Hardly. Nor do I think that's the word for Orlando (where I went to school - in case you didn't . When I think of Orlando words like "entertainment", "tacky", and "money" come to mind. So where does one who's "artsy" reside? Austin, TX? I've heard good things about that place, though I'm not so sure about living in Texas. New Orleans? Hmmm...probably not a good idea, esp. since I'd like to move away from the south to someplace a little colder. Of course maybe the good thing about being "artsy" is that you can always find a way to make the city you live in fit with your word.

One Word

2007-12-17T17:52:00.000-05:00

I've recently been reading and long-distance-book-clubbing Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. You may have seen 4 million copies of this book prominently displayed in the front of your local large chain bookstore since the author went on Oprah. Although this is not at all the type of book I would usually pick up for myself, one of my friends saw the Oprah interview, told me about it, and we decided to read it together. And, a little surprisingly, I've really enjoyed it so far.

The basic idea is that the author goes through a rough divorce and a minor mental breakdown and realizes when it's all over that she's unhappy and has the means and desire to basically take a year off. She spends 4 months in Italy eating pasta, eating pastries, drinking cappuccinos, eating delicious cheeses, and gaining a lot of weight, and she's delighted by it. Then she spends 4 months in India at an ashram studying yoga, practicing meditation, regaining self-confidence, and getting her spiritual life in order again. This is as far as I've read, but in the final section she travels to Indonesia to live with a monk or something.

Throughout the book she has a lot of interesting insights and presents them with an unapologetic but not preachy voice. In Rome, she picks up the idea of finding one word to describe a person or place. Here's the dialogue, picking up where the author is talking with an Italian friend and realizing that, as much as she loves Rome, she's really just a tourist:

Giulio said, "Maybe you and Rome just have different words."
"What do you mean?"
He said, "Don't you know that the secret to understanding a city and its people is to learn--what is the word of the street?"
Then he went on to explain, in a mixture of English, Italian and hand gestures, that every city has a single word that defines it, that identifies most people who live there. If you could read people's thoughts as they were passing you on the street of any given place, you would discover that most of them are thinking the same thought. Whatever that majority thought might be--that is the word of the city. And if your personal word does not match the word of the city, then you don't really belong there.
"What's Rome's word?" I asked.
"SEX," he announced.
"But isn't that a stereotype about Rome?"
"No."
"But surely there are some people in Rome thinking about other things than sex?"
Giulio insisted: "No. All of them, all day, all they are thinking about is SEX."
"Even over at the Vatican?"
"That's different. The Vatican isn't part of Rome. They have a different word over there. Their word is POWER."
"You'd think it would be FAITH."
"It's POWER," he repeated. "Trust me. But the word in Rome--it's SEX."
...
Giulio asked, "What's the word in New York City?"
I thought about this for a moment, then decided. "It's a verb, of course. I think it's ACHIEVE."
(Which is subtly but significantly different from the word in Los Angeles, I believe, which is also a verb: SUCCEED. Later, I will share this whole theory with my Swedish friend Sofie, and she will offer her opinion that the word on the streets of Stockholm is CONFORM, which depresses both of us.)
I asked Giulio, "What's the word in Naples?" He knows the south of Italy well.
"FIGHT," he decides.

I've talked with a few people about this. My friend who's reading this with me decided her word is create, as she's constantly creating creative creations, if you will. My word is zest, as I try to always look at life with passion, excitement, and, well, zest. Talking with another DC-dweller, we decided DC's word is politics, but in a way that reflects more than what happens on Capitol Hill. In DC, politics invades the lives of everyone who lives there on many levels. I know several people who, after leaving a job on bad terms, were reminded of what a "small town" Washington is. Networking is king, lasting friendships are an afterthought.

I've realized that zest does not fit well with politics, and this is fine, because a lot of other people fit better with DC and I'm sure a lot of cities fit better with me. Since I've only been in Columbus for 24 hours so far, I can't choose it's word yet-- I think you have to live some place for at least two years before you know it well enough to pick a word for it.

What about your word? or the word for some of the places you've lived? Or for people you know? How does your word fit with the place you are now? And does this all mean anything?

I like alone time

2007-12-12T11:22:00.000-05:00

Although I definitely see the appeal of performing in front of large groups of applauding people (in a perfect world, I would be a Broadway musical actress), most of the activities I do that I would call "hobbies" involve sitting quietly by myself, possibly in front of the TV after dinner.

I've found that after working eight hours plus commuting, my brain is tired. It wants to relax and detox a little after the day. But I can't usually sit still in front of the TV, vegging out. I have to keep busy with something.

Just recently I finished my 4-year project of putting all my (pre-digital) photos, maps, ticket stubs, etc., from the 4 months I lived in London and traveled through Europe in scrapbooks. These weren't those fancy-schmancy scrapbooks with the cropping shears and gingham paper and crazy stickers... and yet, it still took me 4 years to make about 6 books total. I felt super-accomplished after this.

But then I needed other things to do in the evenings. I designed and printed a couple t-shirts for myself, one of Glenn's poetry (did I ever send you a picture of that, Glenn?) and one of my friend Evan's poetry, both of which I've gotten a lot of compliments on. I plan to do more of this next week when I move to Columbus because I've had too much going on to develop more (and now I have PhotoShop, so that should be easier). I've designed a couple other shirts for myself by cutting out images on some of my favorite old shirts that had gotten way too small (I'm sure it wasn't that I got too big) and sewing them in different ways to new shirts.

I also try to keep myself doing and learning something physical, although I haven't had the opportunity lately. I recently was a regular practicer of yoga, kick boxing, and flamenco dancing. Every one of those was really fun, but I'm especially hoping to get back into yoga and possibly some meditation in Columbus.

Now that I'm moving and won't have a basic nine-to-six-plus-metro-time job, I'll be able to set my own schedule more to keep myself from getting so burnt out during the day. Who knows what will develop from there!

I Like Attention

2007-12-11T09:32:00.000-05:00

That's pretty much the motive behind my hobbies. Theater, singing, blogging/writing, art - not only do I get to be creative, but generally I also get all sorts of praise for doing it.

I suppose that's not the only reason. I do get a thrill knowing I actually entertained someone else. Knowing that I made someone laugh is more of a reward than anything I can think of (well - besides money - if anyone wants to pay me for doing what I love, I'm there)(wait - that doesn't make me a whore, does it?).

Hmmm...that's not very long for a post - I suppose I'd better go a little more in depth. With theater, I can act like the biggest idiot onstage, and as long as it's part of the character, I'm not vulnerable to ridicule for acting that way. That, and well, theater people in general act like complete idiots around each other, so I can get away with it even when I'm not onstage. It's a nice break from having to act all smart, resonsible, and nice when I'm at work - cathartic, if you will.

The same can go for blogging. I can vent all the frustrations I have and then pretty much forget about it. Or, if I can't forget about it, I can generally present it in an amusing way that makes the situation not seem as bad as it is. It's also a great way to let all my friends know what's going on in my life without having to write each of them individually. I'm terrible at keeping in touch, so odds are without my blog, I wouldn't hear much from any of my friends. (Alright, that may be a little bit of a lie - myspace and facebook help me keep in touch as well)

As far as art goes, I hate to call that a hobby. It doesn't seem like I should, since I have a BFA and all. However, as time goes on, I'm spending less and less time on my artwork. I make time for everything else, and I suppose this is one more thing I should try to make time for. But I don't just do it to entertain others or for the praise - that makes it sound like I put more value on the opinions of others than I really do. I don't suppose that's why I do any of these things. Something in my soul just needs it to get by.

But don't get me wrong - I'm still an attention-whore despite that.

why do we...?

2007-12-09T04:22:00.001-05:00

okay, this is filling in for jane's topic:
i'm sure i've mentioned the half-marathon a few times. i ran it last weekend in tucson, and didn't do so badly, if i do say so myself. i hadn't trained enough though(read: had barely trained at all) so my muscles paid for the run all this week. and yet, i'm already excited about the next run. "Next?!?!? i catch myself asking,'what the hell is wrong with you?!?"
which brings me to this week's topic: hobbies. why do we (personally or humanity as a whole) do all those weird things that have no practical value? stamp collecting? genealogcal research? playing musical instruments when one isn't any good? watching/following professional sports... what's the motivation?
sure, some things are for therapy or entertainment.
i guess i'm asking:
1)what are your hobbies/why? and
2)what reasons do you think there are for hobbies to exist as part of the human experience/what actual purpose does the practice of a hobby serve?

i've already mentioned running, which i forsee becoming more of a hobby than it has been. i'm excited to train this time instead of dreading it - look for me in the san diego rock 'n' roll marathon next june if i don't get some kind of an injury before then...
then there's the writing. i've yet to gain any money/fame/what have you from the writing, and if i'm depressed/angry and i write about it i generally get more frustrated, so i don't see a physical or mental benefit, but i continue to scribble or type random snippets, poems, short prose, chunks of historical fiction novels, etc. i have no clue why i so often want to put things on paper/screen.
i also like baking. this has a benefit: i get to eat yummy stuff. i could, however, purchase very nearly as yummy and significantly cheaper goodies at the dollar store. since i'm fairly poor, that might be a more reasonable option, but i don't take advantage of it. i stand on the hard floor until my legs and feet ache stir and knead until my hands hurt, burn myself pretty often, risk knife cuts, and get dry skin on my hands from washing/drying so often. then sometimes whatever i'm making doesn't turn out and i waste everything. there might be some instinctive domestic urges involved in this hobby, since my ancestors have been "happy" homemakers for pretty much all of recorded history. i like to think that i choose to bake though - maybe so i can share the goodies and feel important when people like them...?
last hobby to mention is that i voluntarily go clean up animal poop on a regular basis. sure, there's some fun stuff connected with that: i get to interact and play with most of the animals, and i get to spend time outdoors using the muscles that would atrophy with my desk job (if i hadn't just taken up running). the fact is though, that most of the time i spend working at the wildlife center is scooping poop and other debris up from enclosures and putting it in a dumpster. this one, i know why i do it. humans create false environments and put animals in them. now the animals don't know how to survive in their natural habitats and are past the age where they could learn how, so they have to remain in captivity. since humans created the problem, it's up to humans to take care of it. i'm a human. thus i feel a sense of responsiblity to help out however i can - especially when i see how it hurts the animals to be captive: they'll get frustrated and pace around their enclosure when i know if they were free they'd be running miles on end just because they could. then i really don't like people. i could go on for hours about how much it bugs me when people don't take responsibility for their actions, but hey, this is about hobbies. so i clean up poop, refill food and water dishes, hand out snacks, and give whatever kind of attention each animal seems to want (sometimes i get it wrong and get beat up). in return - they look forward to seeing me. there is nothing in the world like a cougar recognizing your car and running to fence to greet you, or like a wild fox finally (after 4 years) letting me touch her and feel that stunningly gorgeous fur. i know most people don't have the opportunity to interact with cougars, but so many people keep domestic pets - why?

there are my hobbies, how about yours?
ready, set, go!

insomnia helps this time of year

2007-12-08T15:32:00.000-05:00

well, i guess i’m one of those crafty people that gets on other people’s nerves, but i really do make cheap homemade gifts on a fairly regular basis (except for one year when shaggy worked for dss with jane, and we had a lot of money). i own a dehydrator, and love it, so home-dried herbal teas and soup mixes are pretty standard. i’ve also dried craploads of veggies for some pretty good chunky spaghetti sauce mix.... then there’s the sewing. on one occasion i made someone a quilt, but usually it’s something easier – i frequently make and give “butt pillows”. they’re pretty fun, quirky presents that are so simple it’s almost silly:
1) buy cheap multi-packs of boxer shorts, any size, any design (ross, tj maxx, etc. are great places to pay less than $1 per pair). if you want to get really funky, this also works with tighty-whiteys.
2) sew the fly closed first, otherwise you’ll forget
3) turn shorts inside out to sew leg holes closed. then turn them right side out again. the reason for this is that the stitches won’t show, so you can sew as sloppily as you want to (i’m interested to know if one could make these drunk, so if anyone tries, please let me know).
4) sew part of the elastic top closed – be sure to stretch out the elastic while sewing so the thread won’t rip out later.
5) fill with stuffing – this can be bought at a fabric/craft store or ripped out of old pillows/stuffed animals, etc.
6) sew the rest of the top closed.
7) ta-daa!

i find the butt pillows are pretty popular in those white elephant swap-the-gift kind of games. if you want to get really complicated, smaller boxers/briefs can be made into purses/handbags, etc. when i get the copyright, this line will be called “the brief-case”... i know, it’s awful.
another fun cheap gift is home-canned anything. this year i had fun with my crock-pot and turned out both cranberry sauce and apple butter, which i then sealed in jars and tied ribbons on. i was once given a pumpkin-loaf cake that had been baked in the jar and then sealed. i haven’t tried to make them yet because i ran out of jars, but i will try someday. canning really isn’t as difficult as people make it sound either – as long as you have jars and lids with that seal-y ring thing. just fill the jars almost all the way, put the lids on, put the jars in a pot of water, and boil for about 15 minutes. supposedly the jars only seal if there is an inch of water above them, but i’ve found (since my jars were too tall) that as long as the boiling water bubbles over the tops of them, they’ll seal just fine. after the jars have boiled, use tongs or two sticks or whatever you’ve got handy to lift them out of the water. twist the lids on tighter. as the jars cool, the top should “pop” in, creating the seal. if they don’t pop, put them back in the water and boil a few more minutes.
the whole home canning thing can be really fun if you use tiny jars to re-bottle something like ragu sauce. you can legitimately tell someone you home-bottled the spaghetti sauce, and it only takes about 20 minutes to do.
another easy-peasy fun gift is a fleece scarf. most fabric stores have cheap scrap sections, and if you can find a chunk of fleece that’s long enough for a scarf, you’re practically done. some people try to get fancy and hem the edges, but fleece is really cool in that you don’t have to do that. i just fringe the ends by cutting multiple snips of the same lengh into each end and then tying knots in all the fringe pieces. done!
this year i went a tad further with fleece and made some herbal neck wraps – a square of fleece folded in half with the edges sewn together makes the outer pouch, and a square of some other random fabric with a tiny weave with the edges sewn together makes an inner pouch to be stuffed with lavender, sage, mint, cloves, and some rice. herbal neck wraps can be microwaved (i haven’t ever used a glass of water, but i’ve never nuked ‘em for more than a minute at a time either... go ahead and use the glass of water i guess. i’ve also had pretty good success freezing them for a cold pack.
finally, the holiday greeting card is simple – construction paper, scissors, glue, markers, and a bit of glitter paint are super fun to play with, and if the cards come out stupid, you could always tell people your little nephew made them. unless of course you don’t have a nephew. then you’ll have to make up your own lie i guess.
of course, if the cheap present you’re attempting to make is for me... (unless it’s pecans, which are awesome) just send me the two bucks.
cheers!

Gifts to Impress

2007-12-07T15:05:00.000-05:00

In an increasingly consumer-driven holiday, giving a homemade gift is nice way of bringing a more personal touch to your gift-giving. Below, I offer up some ideas that go above and beyond making some crafty ornament or a tin of cookies.

The Gift of Life - Give blood or donate an organ. The easy way to do it would be to sign up for a list or go to a blood bank, sure, but if you really want the WOW! factor, get into DIY mode. Imagine the look on your loved one's face when they open up a package and see your kidney waiting inside! You don't need to be a phlebotomist or a surgeon, you just need an exacto (or utility) knife, alcohol, a cooler or fridge, and a bit of nerve. And don't think you can't get anything out of it - if you're really creative you can give yourself great decorative scars. Decorate yourself for Christmas by carving a Christmas tree into your forearm. It's the gift that keeps on giving! If you're really in the giving mood, why not hack off a whole limb? The technology for a bionic arm is already here, it's probably only another 20-25 years before it's available to the public. Surely you can live with just one arm for that long, if it means that your sister has a cool new coat rack for her room.

For Her - Two words - pubic hair. It's the next best thing to "Dick in a Box". There's no bigger turn on - really. You can take the least subtle route and place on on a can of Pepsi the next time she asks you for a drink, and sex is guarranteed. It worked for Clarence Thomas, right? Or you could be a little more clever. Remember the Victorian hair jewelry/artwork Caitlin talked about? Why not make a landscape or a potrait of her? (Note: The portrait will really only work if the woman you are trying to impress is the bearded lady - or one of those people with hypertrichosis).

For Him - Sorry ladies, vagina in a box is a little hard to pull off, not to mention a bit redundant. (Think about it - your "box" in a box?) So you'll have to come up with something a little different. Make a plaster cast of his penis. (He'll probably enjoy this step) Then you can make a mold of it, and make some wonderful items for around the house. Depending on his size, you can either come out with a nice set of salt and pepper shakers, a sinlge bud vase, or perhaps a poker for the fire. Another idea is for you to get some rubber and make a nice chew toy for the dog. Depending on your creativity and gusto (and the amount of objects you make), eventually he'll be so tired of seeing his penis all over the place, he'll be less likely to want to put it in your face. It's a gift that's a win for both giver and givee.

I hope these tips bring some joy to your giving and excitement to your holday season!

Nuts!

2007-12-07T13:20:00.000-05:00

My house has one pecan tree in its yard. My mom's house has four. Every other year, these trees drop ginormous loads of pecans onto the ground below them. All we have to do is pick them up and - voila! Presents! There's a place here in town called The Nut House which will crack the pecans for you, so you don't have to go through the arduous process yourself. Some of you might be getting pecans this holiday season. Hell, some of you have already received pecans!

Plagiarism is quick and easy!

2007-12-06T09:41:00.000-05:00

I'm in the process of moving and scrambling to finish my projects at work before my last day (tomorrow), so I will confess to having completely ripped off this post from one of my favorite sites, WikiHow. What's more amazing than the weird stuff that people know how do to is the fact that they find it worth sharing with the rest of the world! So here's how to make a bunch of unique gifts with little more than some old socks:

How to Recycle Your Socks
You've just cleaned out your drawer, and in front of you is a huge pile of old, holey, mismatched socks. You're thinking about throwing them away, but that's just wasteful. Here are some great ways to recycle those socks - perhaps you never realized just how useful socks can be beyond wearing them!

Steps:

1. Make a dust rag. Slip the sock on your hand. Dampen it with water or a furniture polish and clean away! Socks are good for furniture, window sills, computer screens, floor spills, handles, and blinds.

2. Polish your shoes. Old socks make great shoe polishers. You can also use them to shine the shoe after polishing.

3. Make a homemade hacky sack. A hacky sack is a small cloth ball filled with small beads or beans. Cut off about half the top part of a long sock and about three quarters for a short sock. Fill the sock with dried rice, dried peas, or beads. Sew the opening together in a ball shape.

4. Make a drink cozy. This requires a long sock. Cut the whole top of the sock off. Slide it over a bottle to keep the bottle cool (insulated). A shorter sock can be used for cups and cans.

5. Make a coin purse. You'll need an anklet-sized sock for this project. Use the whole sock and decorate this sock bag with sequins, beads, glitter, or any other decorative items you have about the house. Sew a strip of fabric onto the top for a handle, or a zipper across the opening.

6. Make sock dolls. You can also make a sock monkey or a sock puppet. Fill the sock with beans or rice. Glue, sew, or draw on eyes, nose, and mouth. Cut up another old sock into strips and sew on for hair.

7. Keep a pet's paws warm. If you have an ailing animal that is suffering from the cold, old socks can be helpful in keeping their paws warm. If you are a wildlife rehabilitator, another great use for socks is as temporary pouches for baby animals in your temporary care, such as baby joeys, bats, or possums. Any creature that likes a springy and soft warm place to snuggle into will appreciate this and you will be able to hang the sock up if it is a strong old woolen type, to mimic mother animal's pouch.

8. Make muscle relaxing packs. Fill with rice or wheat and sew up the open end. Place in the microwave with a glass of water to heat for 1 minute. Hang around your neck or place on other sore muscles for instant relief. (Note: Always include the glass of water to provide moisture or the pack can catch on fire if it dries out too much after repeated use.)

9. Make a hard-to-reach cleaning stick. Get a ruler (the longer the better) and slip the sock over the end. Attach with an elastic band or staple. Use this to run underneath stoves, fridges, and other hard to reach places. The sock-covered ruler will return lots of fluff and dust and it is easy to wash the sock after each use.

10. Make horse bandages. Cut the foot off the end of a long sock and make a horse bandage. Smaller socks might be suitable for smaller animal bandages on dogs or cats (try children's socks).

11. Make garden soap holders. Gardening can be messy and dirty. Pop a soap bar into the bottom of an old sock and tie a knot around the soap part of the sock. Leave the long part of the sock for tying onto a faucet in the garden. It will be ready for you whenever you need to clean up outside after a gardening session.

12. Sew a quilt or a sock rug. You will need to find the instructions on how to do this (do an internet search) but it is possible to make quilts and rugs from old socks. This gives them extra utility for years to come and is especially neat for those socks with cute patterns or designs that you can't bear to part with.

13. Wash the car or bike. A sock over the hand and you have an instant cleaning cloth that is soft enough for the car body or bike frame. Use one for washing and one for buffing.

14. Make draft protectors. Fill a long sock (knee-high is good) with beans, rice, or other spare filling that you have around the house. Sew or tie up one end and you have an instant, rounded draft protector. If you want to enhance its appearance, add eyes, nose, mouth and maybe feelers or whiskers - whatever sort of animal that you can imagine.

15. Add a tennis ball. The purpose of adding a tennis ball to an old sock can be twofold:
* Make a back and neck soother. Tie the tennis ball inside the end of a long sock. Taking the long end of the sock, toss the sock over your shoulder so that the ball lands on your back. Stand against a wall and lean against the sock and ball. Rub your back up and down against the ball that is squeezed into the wall and it will massage away aches and pains from sport, sitting too long at the computer or any other activities that may have caused back tension. Use a shorter sock for a neck massaging version.
* Make a dog pull-toy. In the same way, place the tennis ball in the end of the sock and tie around it. Take the long end of the sock and tempt your dog to take it. If your dog is playful, a fun tug-of-war is likely to ensue. See Warnings below.

16. Make a sock jump rope. All you have to do is tie about 15 or so long socks in a line and you have a neat jump rope! It's also fun to use different colored socks!

17. Make a dog toy.
* Take a dog's chew bone and put it in an old sock. You can bunch it into a ball and play fetch. The dog will have fun trying to get the bone out. See Warnings below.
* Put an empty plastic water bottle in the sock, tie the end and give to dog. Many dogs seem to love crunching water bottles and the sock stops the plastic from decorating your yard.

18. Save them for moving day. Place valuable glasses, or knick knacks inside the sock sole and wrap the higher part around the bottom. This will give more protection. Add a tag on the outside of the sock, so you remember what is inside. Place in a moving box or inside one of your dresser drawers.

19. Make potpourri holders. Place potpourri inside and sew closed. Great in closets and dresser drawers. Gives off a gentle smell for months.

20. Make a cat toy. Pour Catnip into an old sock and tie it off. Cats love them. Just watch for holes.

21. Start a new trend. Wear two socks of different colors. Make sure that each color matches your outfit. It'd probably work well with Harajuku style. Art from the Middle Ages c. 1300's ("Les Tres Riches Heures de Duc du Berry--January) shows that royalty and the neighborhood landowner wore socks or stockings of different colors. They were actually very fashionable.

22. Make Fingerless gloves. Cut a hole in the heel and cut off the toe of the sock. Stick your thumb in the heel hole and your fingers out the toes. If you want you can tuck under the raw edges where you made the cuts or sew a simple hem.

23. Make a Rifle Rest Bag. Simply fill a tube sock with rice and tie off the open end. Use it to steady the fore-end of your rifle at the shooting range. Make several and put them under the fore-end and the stock to improve your accuracy.

Tips
* You don't have to use only these ideas - use your imagination as well!
* Always launder socks before using them in any of the projects.
* Always sew up any holes in old socks that are destined for any projects required filling. Obviously if you don't, the filling will pour straight out of the hole.

Warnings
* Using a sock as a dog chew toy poses two dangers: it might teach your dog that all socks are chew toys, so try to ensure that it does not look like a sock before you let your dog use it; and ingested socks can cause bowel blockage, a serious concern for your canine companion, so if the sock becomes damaged, you should take it back.
* Young kids will probably need an adult to help with the ideas that involve sewing.
* Be careful when microwaving a sock containing rice, beans, or deer corn. Microwave it for no more than two minutes, and monitor it, as there is a remote chance that it may overheat and catch fire. To ensure that this doesn't happen, always place a mug full of water in the microwave along with the sock.

Things You'll Need
* Old socks
* Dried peas, rices or beads
* Yarn, markers, sequins, or other decorative items
* Needles and thread
* Large cardboard box to store your odd and old socks - to avoid the temptation to toss them away
* Potpourri
* Tennis ball

The Season Of Giving (And Getting)

2007-12-04T13:17:00.001-05:00

My friend Ashley suggested that the topic this week be cheap homemade gifts people can make in order to save some dough. (I'll expand that to say feel free to talk about consumerism and Christmas in general if you want.)

As you all know, I am broke. I will probably be broke for the rest of my life. That's a choice I make. (Obviously I am not literally broke, since I am on a computer and not starving to death, but you know, perspective or somethings). So homemade gifts are something that appeal to me. Here's a few ideas for homemade gifts I have, and easy directions you can follow to make them yourself. Enjoy!

1 - Write a nice poem for the person to show you care about them - First, go to graduate school for poetry. Then, find a person you like and start to care about them. (These steps can be reversed). Then write a poem about them. In order to make it good, though, you have to complicate the issues and remove rhymes like "love, dove, glove" or "soul, hole, pole." Replace them with phrases like "a plant starves in winter," "Jupiter in the Heavens and the intricate map of asphalt on earth," or "I want to do it to your butt big time." Give poem to person. Actually, probably you shouldn't give poem to person. They will think you are totally weird and cheap. Unless you went the butt route. Then give the poem to person for sure.

2 - Bake a big double chocolate fudge cake - First, find a friend. Then, make sure his name is Glenn Shaheen. Then, find some recipe or something. Who am I, Emeril? Finally, give Glenn Shaheen the cake. You can leave now.

3 - Make a collage that isn't creepy - First, get a bunch of magazines. Make sure they are not Hustler, Penthouse, Jugs, Big Black Butts, Suffering Sapphotage!, Monster Cocks In Tiny Socks Quaterly, or *vagina: the journal of new experimental feminist pornography. Then, cut out some pictures that represent the relationship you share with the person. Try not to just cut out teeth or mouths or thumbs and glue them everywhere in the shape of stars. Then, paste the pieces onto a backdrop. If you are so broke you can't afford glue, try not to make a huge deal of how you used your saliva, tears, etc, to make the collage. Also, present the collage to the friend face to face. Don't nail it to their door, pet, or put it on their sleeping body in the middle of the night. Voila! Collage!

4 - Send an E-Card! - Just kidding. Don't fucking send an E-Card.

5 - Make some homemade jewelery - Perhaps you have 100 spoons like I do for some reason. Here's a great excuse to get rid of some of those spoons! First, get a small caliber pistol. Then, shoot holes in like 20 spoons. Try to hold them a little away from your face for safety. Then put a string or some other flexible slender thing through the spoons. There you have it! Christmas necklace! It's like the ear necklace in Universal Soldier. Remember that movie? (I really do have way too many spoons, though. I don't get it).

There you have it! Five cheap, homemade gift ideas from yours truly!

I only have one thing to say about Christmas and commercialism right now. I'm not a Christian, so the dereligiousing of Christmas doesn't bother me. On the other hand, I don't get upset when stores say Merry Christmas or whatever. But as you all know, my favorite holiday for candy's sake is Easter. They have Cadbury creme eggs, and the mini eggs too. And they hadn't infiltrated other holidays. But a couple of weeks ago Laurie (my girlfriend in Houston, not Laurie who posts here) came back from New York with some "Cadbury Ornament Eggs." We thought they might be minty on the inside, because that's Christmassy, but when we bit into them they were just regular Cadbury Creme Eggs. As much as I love those eggs, I was a little disappointed that they had made the leap. And they didn't even change the design of them at all! I mean, eggs? At Christmas? Easter is the thinly veiled pagan fertility festival. Christmas has nothing to do with eggs and fertility. Christmas is the thinly veiled pagan solstice festival.

Oh well, I'll still buy and eat them.

1/4Life

2007-12-03T09:00:00.000-05:00

I suppose I've been having a quarter-life crisis for several years now.

Like Jane, I got out of college and couldn't get a job in my field. In fact, I couldn't really get any job. I tried for art teacher, secretary, retail, etc. However, when they saw the degree in animation on my application they all had the same question. "Where do you think you'll be 5 years from now?" I wasn't about to answer that I thought I'd still be working at a crappy paper company (yes, I would've been Pam from The Office), so I told the truth, and of course didn't get the job. In my mind I hoped that I would be working for some fabulous animation company. OK - honestly, I would've been happy at a crappy animation company - just to be doing the work in my field.

The one thing I wouldn't have answered would be that I thought I'd be working at a library and living back at home with my mother. 5 years haven't passed yet - I still have a little under 2 years, so maybe there's still hope. I don't think I'll get a job at an animation company, but at least there's still time to move away. The library isn't that bad, though I'm not entirely sure I want it as a career.

During the last 3 years and 3 months, I've bounced back and forth between what I thought should be the next step. I've thought about law school, a masters in fashion or interior design, tattooing, and even culinary school. I've toyed with the idea of opening an art store here in Lake City. I'm caught between the idea of staying where I am and moving. (Though usually that's hindered by the fact that I can't ever seem to save any money)

Of course, maybe all of this isn't a true "crisis", just life. It takes time to figure shit out sometimes, and while I may not be sure about the future, I'm not too bad off where I am.

Late Bloomer?

2007-11-29T11:32:00.000-05:00

I remember talking about the quarter-life crisis phenomenon near the end of college, but I've never really felt like I was in one. Of course, I didn't hit my big teenage rebellion until I was 19, so maybe it's still coming.

Like most people my age, though, I have been doing my own share of wandering and looking for "my place" in society/the world/the universe. I moved up to DC a few months after college, sight unseen, not knowing any one. I can confess now that I did this mainly for two reasons: 1.) to have something to propel me out of Florida (which is not a terrible place, just the place where I was born, grew up, and went to school, and I wanted something new) and 2.) to get away from living in my parents' house. My parents are pretty great, but eventually that arrangement would probably have ended tragically.

After my first DC job left me ready to come running back to my parents' house in Florida and to declare defeat by DC, I managed to find another one that I've (generally speaking) liked.

But now it's time to move on from that as well. I suppose now is as good a time as any to announce it, so here goes! Over Labor Day, I proposed to my long-term and long-distance boyfriend, and he said yes, which is always nice. He teaches in Columbus, Ohio, and can't relocate, so I'm moving from DC to join him. I have just over a week of work left here, then a week to finish packing, and then I'm off! I plan to work as a consultant to my current company from Columbus and concentrate much more on free-lance and creative writing (and possibly other art projects). And no, no date yet. I'm not ready to get into all the wedding hysteria yet.

Now that I write it out so briefly here, that does seem like a quarter-life crisis (I just turned 26 a couple weeks ago). But it really doesn't feel like that while I'm living it. I feel more like I've given DC a chance and realized that, although it has a lot to offer and I've enjoyed most of my time here, it's not the city for me (more on this in a couple weeks when I pick the topic). On the other hand, I've found someone who is the person for me, so I might as well be with him while I give a new city a try. My visits to Columbus have really impressed me--so far the city (away from the campus) seems to have a good soul--and I'm really excited about the move. Plus, it will be nice to have Congressional representation again, although I don't yet know who those people will be.

MFA

2007-11-28T00:48:00.000-05:00

I sort of think my whole life has been a series of unending kinds of crises, so I'm not too sure if I can call my current reevaluation of my life any different than when I decided to be a filmmaker in high school.

See, that's what is called starting "in medias res," because I didn't explain what my crisis was before I started talking about it. Hooked? Well, as you all know and could probably tell from the title, my current situation-that-might-be-viewed-as-a-crisis-by-losers-in-law-school is me going to poetry school for an MFA. See, for a couple of brief semesters I was taking pre-med classes a few years ago, and then I decided that poetry was what I wanted to do, so even though it would put me in a substantial amount of debt and not guarantee me any kind of steady income in my life ever for as long as I live, I dropped all of the pre-med and applied to MFA programs. Now I'm almost done with my MFA here in Houston.

But maybe what is different about this phase in my life is that unlike rock star/astronaut/filmmaker/rock star/novelist/doctor/rock star, I am fully planning on continuing with the poetry writing and hopefully eventually teaching. So much so that I am applying to phds right now, which would be another 5 years of edumacation. So I guess I can understand the need to evaluate one's life in the mid-twenties.

For me the major catalyst for all of this latest change and evaluation started when I taught middle school. Long story short (you've all heard it before)- Sucked, people dumb, students lame, public school bureaucracy unsalvageable. That's when I was really in a funk for a while. I applied to 50 fucking jobs, and the only two I got were at a call center in Lake City where they hire everybody (I quit after I discovered they were going to pay me less than they had promised) and a job as a bag boy at Publix. I moved in with Laurie and her then boyfriend in a house in the Tallahassee ghetto at which we routinely had prostitutes bringing their johns onto our porch. I reenrolled in school to take pre-med classes. I aced them all, but all the pre-med students were whiny jerks, and it just wasn't any fun. My friends in Tallahassee who were all doing poetry stuff seemed to have so much fun, and although I could talk to them about poetry, I felt disconnected from the academic group. So after taking a class with Barbara Hamby, I decided "Fuck all this financial security business, Jeeves, I want to go to poetry school." Poetry was what I did that I liked the best, so why shouldn't I find a way to do that and get paid (someday, perhaps in crackers. Maybe the kind with peanut butter in the middle.) So I applied and got in the end.

Now things are going pretty well, and I'm happy with the decisions I've made, even if I can't get any of you guys to read or like poetry. Oh well! At least I've managed to talk everybody into agreeing that the Original Series is way better than Next Gen.

PS - A BSG milestone - this is the 800th time on Blog Supergroup that I've posted about poetry. A celebration is in order, I believe!

i really didn't mean to suck...

2007-11-26T23:46:00.000-05:00

i missed my day!!!
thanks for picking it up jane, and i'll cover yours.
i spent pretty much the whole day sunday on the phone with a very good friend i hadn't spoken to in a really long time, so the post didn't happen.
anyway, my connection ain't the speediest right now, so i'm gonna have to catch the show later.
i just hit the big 25 myself, so i guess i'm really at the QLC point, but i think i'm okay - i'm in a job that could potentially be a long-term career, which is great since i dropped out of college: my boss has expressed that she wouldn't mind my succeeding her when she retires in a few years, so if i want to stay in human resources forever, i could do that. it would eventually pay enough to get by on, even though the ymca is non-profit. i might not mind sticking with it, since it allows me to be nit-picky about details, and nobody else knows labor law at all so i can make up whatever bull-honkey i want and they'll believe it. that's kind of fun. i would like to own a home, but i'm resigned to renting as long as we live in southern cal, and we've got a retirement place set up in washington state as soon as we have enough money... so if i ever do write the books i keep thinking about, that might be sooner rather than later.
i'm basically content with life, or would be if we had a little more cash. anyone need a personal trainer?

Quarterlife crisis, anyone?

2007-11-26T20:33:00.000-05:00

Hi guys, it's me, Jane. I know I'm posting out of turn, but I'm covering Linda's spot this week. My topic of choice is rather multifaceted, so for you commenters and other BSG posters, feel free to address any (or all) aspects. Whichever moves you. Our topic of the week, if you can't guess, is the Quarterlife Crisis. We BSG bloggers are all in our mid (or in my case, late, but we don't need to focus on that) twenties, and I suspect that most of us have had, are having or will have a quarterlife crisis at some point pretty soon.

So what is a quarterlife crisis (QLC)? Growing up, I'd always heard of The Midlife Crisis, where stereotypically one freaks out at the impending arrival of old age, gets divorced, dates people way too young for one's age bracket, and buys a sports car. I first heard about QLCs when I was in the middle of mine. I'd say mine began my senior year of college (2001) - when I discovered that despite having been told all my life that a college degree would land me a great job, no one wanted to hire me - and ended with the penning of my manifesto in Fall 2005. I don't know if Melissa will remember this, but she was the one who first brought the term QLC to my attention. We had just returned from our first (and hellish) trip to South Korea, had no job, no job prospects and no real interest in real jobs anyway. I don't remember how she heard about QLCs, but when she described it to me I knew that it fit what I was going through exactly.

But what *is* a QLC? you ask. Well, according to wikipedia a QLC is a psychological "crisis" akin to the midlife-crisis, but occurring amongst those ages 21-29. Symptoms include (among other things) feeling "not good enough" because one can't find a job that is at one's academic/intellectual level, frustration with relationships, the working world, and finding a suitable job or career, confusion of identity, insecurity regarding the near future, and insecurity regarding present accomplishments. (That came from the wikipedia article on QLCs, which I highly recommend reading in its entirety.)

Anyhow, roughly six years after I first heard about this QLC concept, it seems to have hit the mainstream via... well, I was going to write TV show, but that's not the case at all. Quarterlife is an internet-based show. It's shown ONLY on the internet. However, it's not some sort of low-budget, made-for-the-net kind of production; it's got the production quality of a legit TV show. (I heard on NPR that because of the TV writers' strike, TV channels are negotiating with Quarterlife to air it on regular TV, as that show - being set entirely in new-media - had already negotiated a completely different contract with their writers. No clue as to how that will pan out.) Episodes last about fifteen minutes, and are posted on the Quarterlife site every Sunday and Thursday. I've actually found the show pretty engaging, thus far.

In addition to simply being a net show, quarterlife has its own social networking site (a la MySpace and Facebook) as well, where you can create your own profile, upload blogs, vlogs, etc, and even befriend the characters from the show. As a social networking site, quarterlife leaves much to be desired, as it's new and there are still quite a few kinks in the programming. But, never fear! The Quarterlife characters have MySpace pages! No, I don't mean that the actors playing these people have MySpace pages, I mean the characters have them. These pages are maintained as though these characters were real people [example]. They even have blogs, where they blog about things that have happened in the show... and entirely unrelated things like Hillary's candidacy and class divisions in the US. Which totally weirds me out. These are not real people!

So, things to think on this week: What do you think about quarterlife crises as a concept? Have you had one, or are you having one now? What were/are your QLC experiences? What are your thoughts on the Quarterlife internet show? What do you think about the idea of internet based "tv"? What do you think about being able to interact with characters from shows? Have fun!

Churkey (and other yummy goodness)

2007-11-23T12:27:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was Thanksgiving, and I hope everyone had a great one. My Aunt Kathy is currently living with my mom, so there were three of us for the feast. My mom decided to cook (and stuff!) a chicken instead of a turkey. (Heehee, churkey.) I'm not entirely sure why she decided this, but it was fine by me, as I don't particularly like turkey. We also had three pies: pumpkin, sweetpotato and pecan. I really dislike sweetpotato pie. For years my mother has insisted that I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between pumpkin and sweetpotato, so yesterday I had a blind taste test. I immediately knew which one was yummy pumpkin pie and which was nasty sweetpotato. Hah! Anyway, the food was delicious, and even without a tryptophan-containing turkey, we all needed a serious nap after dinner. Here are some pictures of our feast:

And now for some random Thanksgiving tales:

While in college: Those of you from Lake City might possibly know who Cleopatra J. Steele is. For those of you who don't, she is a pastor of a somewhat cult-like church which operates just north of downtown Lake City in the rather, shall we say, ghettoish part of town. In addition to a church, she runs a thrift store and several halfway houses and homeless shelters, all in that neck of the woods. (My Aunt Kathy, the one currently living with my mom, suffers from severe mental illness. She has lived in a couple of Cleopatra's shelters, attended her church, and has known Cleopatra for years.) I've never been able to decide if Cleopatra is actually doing good, or if she's simply running a really good scam. Anyway, every year for Thanksgiving her church sponsors a dinner for the homeless and otherwise needy in an empty lot near her church. For two or three years while I was in college, Melissa and I (and sometimes her mom, sometimes my mom) would go to help serve the meals. Or well, the first year we went to help serve. After that we just went to eat. Yeah.

Thanksgiving 2001: Melissa and I had just returned from our really horrific trip to Korea. Melissa and most of her family went somewhere (North Carolina?). However, Alex (at the time Melissa's boyfriend, now her husband) and I remained in Lake City, taking care of Melissa's mentally and physically handicapped brother. Alex went home (to Macclenny, FL) for Thanksgiving dinner, and returned bearing tons of really yummy food. Yay! We watched a twenty-four hour Star Trek: The Next Generation marathon. Also, at some point during that weekend, Glenn and Stephanie stopped by. I'd just woken up and looked like crap and didn't want them to see me. I told Alex to tell them I wasn't there, but instead he invited them in and told them I was hiding behind the TV. Thanks a lot.

Thanksgiving 2003: I was living in San Diego, CA, and had been dating a certain guy since Halloween. Said certain guy had essentially no good qualities, except that he was a really good cook. He wanted to cook a true turkey-day feast, but between the supermarket workers strike and the fact that we didn't get around to shopping until the day before Thanksgiving, we couldn't find a turkey. So we bought and stuffed a chicken - my first churkey experience. And it was a delicious feast. If only said certain dude hadn't turned out to be a racist, sexist, alcoholic jackass, because he sure could cook.

Thanksgiving 2005: I was in Russia, and it was AWESOME. That day has it's own lengthy and picture-filled blog post, which you should totally check out by clicking here.

Thanksgiving 2006: For American Thanksgiving, I did not a damn thing. See, Korea has its own holiday of thanksgiving, called Chuseok. Chuseok 2006 was in early October (the date varies as it's based on the lunar calendar; Chuseok 2007 actually fell on my birthday, although I was no longer in Korea at the time). Anyhow, for Chuseok, I went with Gwen and Samson to his hometown for their family gathering and feast. It, too, was awesome and has it's own lengthy and picture-filled blog post, which you should most definitely check out by clicking here.

Making a Home for the Holidays

2007-11-22T07:42:00.000-05:00

I love Thanksgiving. This is easily explained by another 3-word sentence: I love food. The last several years have been kind of unusual Thanksgivings, as I've not spent a lot of time within 1000 miles of my family in Florida.

2003: Montreal (1370 miles away)
2004: Montreal (ditto)
2005: Switzerland (4766 miles away)
2006: Florida (there's still a story here)
2007: Kitchener, Ontario (923 miles away)

When I can't get to my family for Thanksgiving, whether they are in Florida or North Carolina, I like to either 1) find a surrogate family (like Glenn does), or 2) have a nice meal anyway.

The first year in Montreal I kind of did a bit of both: a friend of ours -- who is actually from Luxembourg, not the US -- hosted a Thanksgiving with her roommates and other pals with turkey, crazy desserts, and all sorts of trimmings with a bizarre continental twist. It wasn't quite like a family occasion, since Sean was the only guy there and we were all in our twenties and unrelated, but there was a nice atmosphere and our hostess was/is a spectacular cook. Unfortunately, our friend didn't do Thanksgiving, part deux, for 2004. I don't really even remember what Sean and I did that year, so I am going to guess it involved going out to eat or something. Which is a nice idea, but not a proper Thanksgiving.

The Swiss Thanksgiving experience, though, was a really, really good time: a great excuse to round up a couple Americans, along with three Brits and a Canuck, and celebrate the food culture of the New World with some native English conversation as accompaniment. I found a 15 lb turkey somehow (turkeys are not so popular...) and called upon the spirit of "Holiday Mom" to pull off a roasted bird, stuffing, carrot souffle and mashed potatoes with some help from Sean and his roommate, Tavis. Unfortunately, while I had the day off, Sean and Tavis (American! from Alaska!) had to work. Tavis got off just in time to help me turn the turkey over, which would have been very difficult to do all by myself. He is also a really fabulous foodie and came through for us by cooking these Bailey's Irish Cream Molten Pots of Love (a kind of brownie with an oozy center and lots of booze) AND an apple pie completely from scratch! Holy shit! The Brits brought wine. The last American, a guy I met online, brought Ocean Spray cranberry sauce! It was a beautiful experience. I made sure to play my Christmas mp3s in lieu of watching the Charlie Brown special on TV.

Last year I WAS with my family. But we didn't have a proper Thanksgiving dinner: we were traveling on the Thursday and probably had frozen pizza or something. And on Friday we were in Sarasota eating a fancy seafood dinner on the beach with my brother's then-fiancee's family. Note the "then." It was magical.

And this year: it's 7:30am. I have been up for an hour and a half. I just did the dishes. I am about to start a turkey pot pie with roasted veg, veg gravy from stock cubes, store-bought pre-cooked turkey, and a frozen pie crust. When that is finished it's on to the pumpkin pie, again with store-bought crust. And at 1pm I start my shift at work, which goes til 6pm (to be fair, my boss offered me the day off...but Thanksgiving is not for daytime television by yourself). The food will be good, I know. The company (Sean) will be great, too. The Christmas wreath I bought for the front door doesn't fit behind the screen door and I have to make at least three long-distance phone calls later to get in touch with my family. I'm feeling kind of maudlin at this point, especially knowing that my two brothers at least have access to a pre-made frozen feast my parents left for them at their house and that my parents themselves will be enjoying a fine spread with some of our closest family friends.

But that's Thanksgiving as I know it: improvising, searching out turkey in foreign lands, and enjoying the best (foodiest) holiday of all with as many other willing parties as possible. I wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving and hope you have a great, gluttonous time, however you manage to celebrate!

Give thanks and whatnot

2007-11-22T00:49:00.000-05:00

So it's that time of year again- Thanksgiving! And it's also the time of year that those of us who are blessed with OCD and of thinking way too much reassess the year that is almost over and what the heck just happened, and what there is to be thankful for.

For me, this year has been quite the tumultuous one. I had a major existential crisis and a bit of a breakdown. I was forced, by the aforementioned crisis as well as other factors, to evaluate my life here and everything I am doing. I missed two weeks of work, after which I got called into my boss' office, told to shut the door...and received a promotion. I got my own office and the responsibility of nine City departments' budgets. I broke up with my girlfriend of almost three years. I got saddled with the financial burden of suddenly having to take care of things I hadn't had to before. I attempted to somewhat get back into the dating scene, and the first person I met, well, let's just say it turned into a huge disaster very quickly. I had to undergo heart tests, one of which took six hours rendered me basically unconscious. I was handed down a disastrously wrong diagnosis and ended up going to the doctor to get reevaluated more times than I'd care to remember for something false. I deal by proxy with some family crises. I ran out of money on more than one occasion (many more, frankly). My "faith" was shaken and I was forced to evaluate my spirituality, or lack thereof, which was a hugely difficult situation considering it was not one I was concerned with for 20-something years. I turned 27 and watched friends move on in their lives, some getting married, etc., while I continued to live the so-called "bachelor" life and pursued my own ends.

But I still have a lot to be thankful for. My family continues to recover from some issues from the past couple of years and seems to be doing better than ever. Most importantly, they are all still here. I keep in touch with friends, for the most part regardless of our distances and differences, and feel blessed that I get to share in their joys. I just reconnected with an old friend I love very dearly and just to my excitement found out I will get to see him again after nearly three years of not even being able to speak with him. I have found some amount of "faith" in my life and a newfound spirituality which seems to have filled a void in my life. My crises reaffirmed my passions in life and reaffirmed to myself that I am on the right track; stepping back from my situation gave me the wonderful chance to see, from the outside, just how lucky I've been and just how happy I am and how right my choices have been. My relationship with my ex has blossomed into a wonderful, caring and comfortable friendship, one which we never had before. My biggest crisis this year also forced also to grow up, and to learn what it actually meant to be an adult and to be grown up and responsible, independent of any outside forces or expectations. I've had to take a hard look at my personality and figure out what defines me and "who" I am and am going to be. I've come out of the ordeals of this past year stronger, more grown up, and more mature, while also holding a newfound appreciation for the people, places, and things in my life, as well as my all-important sense of humor, which has only gotten stronger. And this year saw me come out of the other end of my struggles a stronger person and more passionate, and one more step on the way to achieving my dreams.

I have spent the last several months thinking that 2007 has been the worst, or at least the most exceedingly difficult, year I've had in my 27 years of living, at least from what I can remember (there are some high school times that would be hard to beat if I really thought about it). And 2007 has been the worst year of my (at least adult) life, no question. However, now I also realize that it might have been just what I needed; that the trials actually made me a much stronger, and much happier person. Don't make any mistake though: I'm still a curmudgeon. I wouldn't be Nick if I weren't grouchy. (A funny story: when I was going through the worst of my breakdown earlier this year, for several weeks I was not grouchy, not complaining about stuff, getting worked up about something on the news or in the car. One day, I saw something on TV and became very grouchy and began yelling at the TV. The person who was in the room with me, my ex and current best friend I believe, commented "Nick's back")

This year, I am thankful for my family and their love and support, especially my baby brother who is growing up too fast- this will be his last Thanksgiving at home before he goes off to college. I am thankful that he has listened to his big brother and has not made the same mistakes that I made. I am thankful for the beautiful friends that I have. I'm thankful that I have been given the opportunities I have been given, and that even in the middle of my crises, I was able to rise to the occasion. And yes, I'm thankful for my breakdown this year and the trials I have had. I'm thankful for the appreciation for my life it has afforded me, as well as he fact that I am now a more responsible, ethical, better person, with a clear picture of who I want to be and where I am going. I'm more confident now than I was before. I feel complete just being myself, not feeling I need any outside forces or influences to be "complete." And, of course, I'm thankful that I'm here to be thankful at all.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving.

I love pumpkin pie.

2007-11-21T12:38:00.000-05:00

Thanksgiving has never been too much of a big deal for me. It's not that big a holiday in the old country (just one Monday off), and while it was nice to have a 4 or 5 day weekend whenever we moved to the States, it's just never been that special. We used to eat every meal together as a family as kids, and we never had extended family over.

But I haven't even been home for Thanksgiving in almost 10 years. Maybe I went my freshman year of college. I don't remember. Usually I would just buddy up with some friends (the Killians a few times, and the Schulzes) and eat with their families. The past few years I've just done things with other people who weren't going home with their families.

One thing that I get excited around this time of year for is pumpkin pie, and other pumpkin flavored items. (They have pumpkin spice beer at a lot of bars around town right now, but every single one is always out of it, so I think it's a big lie and none of them really have it. Also, people just equate "cinnamon" with "pumpkin spice," so it's probably gross anyway). Pumpkin is my favorite seasonal flavor. It's way better than peppermint (Christmas), peep (Easter), watermelon (summertime), and even cadbury filling (Easter). Maybe it isn't way better than cadbury filling, but it's still better. Even as I write this out (and maybe that's why I'm writing it out) I am wondering who in the Houston area I can call to go grab some pumpkin pie from House of Pies. This morning for breakfast I had an english muffin with pumpkin butter on it. I wish there was pumpkin flavored Cheerios or some other cereal.

Other food items I like at Thanksgiving: turkey, dressing, green bean casserole.

Does Jones Soda have a pumpkin flavored item this year?

It's been so long I forget how to conclude a blog entry.

Forsooth?

Wandering thanks

2007-11-20T13:16:00.000-05:00

Almost every year, my immediate family spends Thanksgiving in the North Carolina mountains. My aunt and uncle have owned a cabin up there for years (they, like my parents, live in Florida), and they like my family to go up for Thanksgiving to air it out and clean it up before they come up for Christmas. We love it because it was usually the only time of year we could really see fall colors (sometimes) and every once in a while, it would snow!! This is super-exciting for a Florida family, and we spent a lot of time building snowpeople and sledding and throwing snowballs.

The best story to come from this, though, is a lot funnier in retrospect than it was at the time. On Thanksgiving day several years ago, before we put the turkey in the oven but after breakfast, we decided to go on a mid-morning hike. Not long after we started up the gravel road, we all agreed that we were pretty tough and adventurous and capable (a sudden infusion of mountain air can do strange things to otherwise sane people), and we decided to instead to climb straight up one of the mountains to see what was on the other side. This was no towering peak, so when we scrambled up and saw what was there, we felt unchallenged enough to climb up the next hill. I can't remember how long this went on before one of us finally stopped and noticed that we'd all lost track of which direction we'd come from.

While my family does go camping sometimes, we are expressly not hunters. I don't think there's ever been a gun in my house. In fact, I pretty much grew up equating guns with TV murderers (which I don't think is probably a bad thing, but that's another topic). So we were all getting a little nervous when we started hearing the ricocheting echoes of gun shots. My dad assured us people were just out hunting turkeys (my brother and I had seen more than enough cartoons to find this reasonable), but then we started hearing some turkeys gobbling nearby and moved away from them quickly. Later, we came across an old hunting shed with a few wooden benches, no locks, and bullet holes in the windows. I thought for sure there would be a dead body, but luckily there wasn't.

This went on for several more hours until finally we stumbled into an open pasture sloping down into a farm (farmers often don't put fences on the higher side of their farms in that area because the animals don't go up to far and what kind of crazy people would be wandering down from up there?). We passed a few cows, who ignored us, some dogs (my mom swore they were wolves, but I think they were dogs since they were in the farm and not eating things) who followed us suspiciously, then a pig pen with a sow suckling a whole litter of piglets. Eventually, and somehow without getting shot at by the farm's owner, we found the house trailer, complete with a deer strung up from a tree out front, bleeding out. I don't think any of us had EVER seen something like that deer: back feet tied at the ankles to a thick tree branch, both snout and front hooves reaching for the ground, bright white stomach, eyes open, blood dripping slowly off the nose. Ick. My mom stayed with my brother and me in the front while my dad knocked on the door to ask directions back to our cabin.

Following the directions along the road, we found we were still quite a few miles from where we had started. We were exhausted and hungry, but we followed the driveway back down to the hard road, hobbled along it for at least another hour, then turned up our gravel drive for another 30 minutes or so right up the side of the mountain.

All told, I think the whole "walk" was about 4 or 5 hours. As soon as we got home we collapsed in exhaustion for a while, then got up to make Thanksgiving dinner! There weren't very many leftovers.

This year, we have a new place to visit! The aunt and uncle who own the cabin we usually stay in bought the land across the gravel road and built a few houses with one of their contractor friends who lives year-round farther up the mountain. My parents bought one and I think it just finished construction, so this year we'll be staying in the new cabin. Eventually, my aunt and uncle want to tear down their small, comfortable cabin and build a big one to retire in (there's talk about donating it to the fire department to use as a practice house, but we'll see). We've had a lot of fun memories in that cabin, and it will be hard to give up. But I guess all traditions fade away eventually. For example, now when we take pre-dinner hikes, we try to stick to the roads.

The Ghosts of Thanksgiving Past

2007-11-19T09:17:00.000-05:00

My past two Thanksgivings haven't been the best, so I'm a little apprehensive as to what's going to happen this year. Am I going to have to move again, or is it going to be an all-out family war like always? Anyways, in an attempt to get this blog rolling again, this week's topic is Thanksgiving. I am being a tad bit lazy and resubmitting old posts from my other blog, but in my defense, they're quite amusing.

Nov 2006
Thanksgiving and the Apocalpyse - Together at Last!

Thanksgiving didn't exactly start out the best way. The day before, our landlord called to tell us she had sold our house. We now have until Dec 31st to move out. Huzzah! What a start to that day! Actually, I had no idea - but my mother decided to call me at work to tell me for some reason - I actually dreaded being at work more that usual.

The next day I went over to have the big Thanksgiving meal. I've been house sitting - hence why I had to go over. It was cool (house sitting that is) because I got to hang out with Laurie (her family drives her crazy too, so she had been staying with me since Monday) - not to mention the week away from my family. We spent the morning watching What Not to Wear.

Lunch started out normal enough, but then we started talking about moving, and why my mother might possibly lose her job. (**Not in the original post** - this apparently seems to be an annual problem, as just a month or so ago I was looking for places to move because she wanted to quit before she got fired. She hasn't quit -- yet) As soon as Kellie was done eating, she got up and went to take a nap. I got done soon afterward and started to get up from the table. My mother laid a guilt trip about me leaving - and I guess she had a point - she wasn't even done eating yet. I said that I would stay and talk, but I had things I had to do that afternoon.

So I sit on the couch and she starts harassing me about what I'm going to do about my future - saying I shouldn't go back to school, and I need to make a plan. I tried to switch gears and talk about moving again. A friend of our family has a house he's going to sell, and earlier we were talking about renting it from him. I told her that if he would let us, we should just buy it from him. She says she didn't want to - and then starts in about the end times. She's ranting about how everything will be electronic - no more cash - and how she's not going to take a chip from the government. WTF?! Where did this come from? At this point in time I told her to shut up, and that I was leaving, and walked out the door.

EVERYTHING becomes a religious argument. EVERYTHING comes around to the end times. If the end times are so soon then why should I give a fuck about my future? Doesn't seem like I have much of one. Christians have been awaiting the end times ever since Christ's resurrection. There are groups of people who gave up all they had because they were certain the apocalypse was right around the corner. Also - all the Christians are supposed to have raptured or whatever before the Antichrist and the mark of the beast - so why is she even worried about it?

I called the next day to talk to Kellie about what we were going to buy people for Christmas. I needed to ask my mom how much I owed her, because I had given her $50 earlier in the week. I made the mistake of asking how she made the leap from buying a house to the apocalypse, and she started talking about how she wasn't going to be a slave to any government, company, or person, and how she was trying to pay off all her debts. Apparently someone at the temple (Messianic Jewish) brought in a clip about people implanting chips or something. I pointed out that some people still buried money in the backyard - we're too attached to cash right now for anything that drastic to happen. I just hope she doesn't take to burying the money - I'm sure it's the next step before she decides to start re-enacting the movie Frailty ( I swear that's going to happen one day).

Nov 2005
Thanksgiving and the 7th Level of Hell

It actually wasn't that bad. But would you have read it if I had titled it "The Happy Thanksgiving of Smiles and Angel Kisses"? Well ok, you might...weirdos.

Ok so I burned the fuck out of my hand, and got a lecture while I was dying of pain about how my mother hoped I wouldn't cuss like that when I had kids. WTF? I'm not even in any kind of a relationship. I'm not even CLOSE to dating someone, so where the hell does she come up with kids? Im sorry, let me hold your hand on the burner and see if you don't cuss. Hypocrite.

Then Judy called. She was bringing someone with her. (Oh God...the Christian Cowboy! {for those of you unfamiliar with him, see the post titled "As if you NEEDED a reason to think my family is crazy"}). Actually not him, but his daughter. Apparently there were family problems and she needed to get away. From my encounter with him it's understandable.

So they came, and we ate, and things were rather normal. And then came the time that my sister and I had to talk to the girl while my mom and Judy were busy in the kitchen. She started talking about the horses out at Judy's. Next thing I know she says "Oh yeah, and Judy told me about how you guys let Nosey out". I just looked at her, and after I counted to 10 a couple of times, said "There's a little more to that story". And left it at that. (In your face MOM, who thinks I have anger management issues).

So we're talking some more, and the next thing that grabs my attention is "So I heard you met my dad". Kellie and I just looked at each other. "Yeah I know, he's pretty rude". Not such a bad kid after all. There was definitely a gap, she was 11, and we didn't have much to talk about (I didn't dare bring up the topic of Harry Potter), but it wasn't the disaster I thought it was going to be.

Completely unrelated note - everyone should go to http://www.gunthernet.com/ and watch a crazy German with a sexy mullet and too much lip gloss (yes, I'm talking about a guy) sing some, um, interesting songs.

Happy Halloween!

2007-10-31T17:27:00.001-04:00

Hope everyone's making the most of this awesome holiday! (And don't forget - all that Halloween candy is 1/2 price tomorrow!)

community - altruist or survival in numbers

2007-10-25T01:04:00.000-04:00

okay, i think it's my turn for a topic, and it seems like we're done with the macabre-ness, so here's what i've got:
I won’t pretend that this post isn’t influenced by the san diego wildfires. I was struck by the orderliness of the evacuations and the dedication of volunteers to aid evacuees and fire victims – at one point qualcomm stadium (the main evacuation location) asked that no more food donations be brought there, as they had more than enough and were having to throw away uneaten hot food after mealtimes. several people made the comparison between that and the superdome. there were no killings at qualcomm, no robberies that anyone heard of, no waiting four days for someone else to bring water. unorganized people organized themselves to the point where there was a makeshift hospital at the stadium. volunteer doctors and nurses ran basic triage and were in communication with ambulances for anyone in an emergency. other patients were taken to donated cots or donated chairs and given treatment with donated medical supplies. a young man called a local radio station to announce that he and his friend had brewed up 14 gallons of coffee and would be serving it at section b2 of the stadium. a family with 4 children was interviewed on the news – the father said that the kids were being entertained by games, tv, even a clown! many, many people and organizations announced via radio that they were able to house people and/or animals (i.e. “I have three acres of fenced in grass on my ranch that is available for any large animals that have been evacuated. Please call…”). so I’m thinking about all this and wondering what prompts people to do these things? to go so far out of their way to help those in need?
I took part in a debate once in a psychology class regarding pure altruism: does it really exist. for context, this was at byu, so there were religious elements involved in the discussion. the “there is such a thing as a purely altruistic act” side’s main argument involved examples of people providing church service (proselytizing, etc.). my side argued that those people who proselyte (at least purportedly) believe that they will be rewarded in heaven for such acts, and thus are not likely to do the service without at least considering the reward. I didn’t believe that true altruism existed for a long time, but both the outpouring of help from the san diego community, and (I’m sure this is odd, but whatever!) the recent you-tube battle of kruger - among lions, a croc, and a herd of water buffalo (watch it at www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU8DDYz68kM) have shaken that lack of belief. the buffalo attacking lions made me consider instinctive protection of the young of a species, which could be construed as altruism to an extent, if one considers altruism to be defined as “action taken without hope of personal gain”. personal – as in to each individual buffalo. the species as a whole would benefit, but not each buffalo. in the same line of thinking, there are humans who make extraordinary efforts to protect children.
but not all the san diegans receiving help were children.
so, did people help out just so they could meet the governor? to put on their resume? because they were bored? I know that there are several reasons, but thinking about them makes me want to retry the debate: is there such a thing as a purely altruistic act? what do you think?

macabre-o-cult

2007-10-18T21:13:00.000-04:00

i've always been completely creeped out by anything having to do with death or dead people. shoot, i have a hard time watching movies with skulls and bones (realistic ones anyway). i've only ever been to one funeral and it was for someone i had never met. i nearly vomited at the viewing. i can only imagine how bad it would be if i knew the person. i watched the others in the theater and cringed when the dead people photos were on screen. i can't even eat dead animal if i can tell what part of the animal it used to be, and giblets - forget it! so maybe the macabre isn't my forte for discussion. the occult, well, i know lots of people think i'm part of a cult since i'm officially mormon, but i'm thinking more the halloween-ey kind of occult... i know that the first jack-o-lanterns were people heads on spikes and they evolved to being scooped-out turnips before pumpkins became well-known. beyond that - i'm sorry guys: i read a horoscope once in a while, but that's about as occult as i get. consider me "interested but grossed out and kinda lazy" in that department.
To add to the hair jewelry discussion - a history museum out here in california had a stiched wall sampler made of hair. the tour guide told me that girls (in the 1800s) used to collect their own hair to stitch with. that struck me as something i would do because i'm too cheap to buy thread.

Memento Mori

2007-10-18T10:06:00.000-04:00

Since last week's theme was death and dying and this week we're exploring the occult, this is what I've come up with.
***********

Hardly anyone does mourning really stylishly anymore. Stephanie and I found a pamphlet at her church about mourning "successfully" or something, but there were no tips on doing it in style. Sadly, the decorum of death is in decline.

In my travels I have noted a couple of macabre traditions kept alive in cultures outside of North America. My favourite is the frightening stationery still used in Germany that makes life like a suspenseful and tragic film. Picture this: it's a normal sunny day, the birds are singing, and the air is fresh and clean. You're going through your daily routing with a bounce in your step, unaware of what lurks in your mailbox. When it does come time to sort your bills from your catalogues, you crumple into a trembling, sobbing, big mushy pile before you open a single envelope! Why? This.

That's the envelope that tells you someone you love is dead before you have to read anything. I watched my host mother collapse in the above manner twice. And, while she is pretty melodramatic, I think I would have freaked out, too, if I were the addressee.

Another fascinating tradition we no longer follow (unless "we" are Italian grandmothers from the old country) is mourning dress. I am not exactly sure when this went out, but it was probably sometime soon after Victoria died and the upper class in Britain were freed from the bondage of perpetual mourning. (Queen Victoria lost her husband forty years BEFORE she died. And, as far as I know, she wore her mourning garb for those forty years...and her court did, too.) We all know about the wearing black thing. It's commonly seen at funerals today, though that is changing as well. 150 years ago black extended beyond the fabric of those big poofy dresses and took over jewellery and ornament. Victoria single-handedly made a boomtown of Whitby, England, the source of most of the world's jet (an organic gemstone related to charcoal) throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. A very common design for "traditional" jewellery is still simple onyx pendants and rings, often set with a small diamond. When these designs were first popular they were commemorating the dead. Now we are just adjusted to the aesthetic.

Jet jewels and onyx with diamonds are pretty tame, though, in the realm of mourning dress. If you want to get macabre (and verge on occult), why not try earrings made of human hair? Though hair was often collected from a loved one and treasured in a locket during their lifetime, it was very fashionable -- for a time -- to make and wear entire suites of jewellery from the hair of your dead brother. Yikes. Weaving hair takes talent, but so does gluing individual strands onto an ivory disk to "paint" a commemorative picture! The Georgians were big on this and the results are quite impressive. The effect is far subtler and less itchy than that of the woven designs.

However, my favourite facet of the decorum of death is the memento mori theme that appears in jewellery, with or without some dead guy's locks. Basically, it was acceptable to decorate your body with skulls and skeletons long before goths were looking gloomy in suburban malls. The skeleton, Death, was meant as a reminder that we all die and as a memorial to someone deceased. Some of the most striking and wearable mourning jewellery involves fine enamel work of the grim reaper himself. It is imagery that has remained relevant and I am a sucker for fine enamel work.

How is this occult? It's pretty mainstream when the queen is leading the way, but mourning traditions like the scary stationery and strict uniforms of black are, I think, examples of magical thinking. "I have to follow this procedure when X dies. Otherwise, I haven't honoured him correctly." Or, worse yet: "I have to follow this procedure. Otherwise, X won't rest well in the afterlife." That's pretty straightforward. And we can examine these tokens as lasting evidence of these personalities' existence, which is the best part of all. We all know about Queen Victoria, but mourning jewellery that anyone can buy, treasure, and wear didn't ever belong to her. It belonged to people of "no importance" and commemorates the dead who would otherwise be completely forgotten. Each creepy hair earring is a tiny shrine to a life once lived and the alarming dedication of his survivors.

And that's cool.

(For a great look at mourning jewellery both sold and for sale, visit www.thingsgoneby.com)

They're Creepy and They're Kooky, Mysterious and Spooky

2007-10-17T21:23:00.000-04:00

I think we'll continue the macabre theme with a discussion on the occult and the paranormal. Since I am so late in posting this topic, I'm going to try to leave it wide open for any interpretation. This is partly inspired by our book club discussion with the author of Florida's Ghostly Legends And Haunted Folklore: North Florida And St. Augustine. (Who incidentally, my coworker, her daughter, and I are meeting up with to explore a graveyard in Ybor City. Am I psyched? Totally). But since we've covered ghosts (multiple times even), then I thought I would leave it open. Want to talk about your intense dislike for Sylvia Brown? Go for it - I'll probably have my own stuff to add. Or if you'd rather discuss crop circles, do it.

My personal interest lately has been in sin eaters, the spear of destiny, and exorcism. Ok - so it's more on the Catholic religious side, but it's still the occult in my opinion. Most of this has spawned from watching Constantine again. (Which we watched with my youth group - cuss words and all -- we had been talking about angels having free will). But the central plot scheme in the movie is centered around 2 things:

1. Suicides (according to Catholic belief) go straight to hell. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.

2. The power of the Spear of Destiny (the spear that pierced Christ's side and finished him off)

According to legend (in the movie, and somewhat in real life), whoever controls the spear of destiny, controls the power of the world. Hitler is rumored to have had it during WWII (and actually started the war in order to capture it), but whether that was the real deal, or one of several replicas is debatable. In the movie, Gabriel tries to use it to unleash Satan's son, Mammon, onto the world. There's a heck of a lot more to it than that, but read it for yourself.

The other is the notion of the sin eater. This was (maybe is) a person who agrees to take on the sins of the person who is deceased or dying. There would be a ritual where the family of the dead would pass bread and wine over the body, which the sin eater would consume, and thereby take on that person's sin. Here is an entry on it. The idea of it is absolutely hellish if you believe in a heaven and hell. What if they died before they could pass on all the sins to someone else? Usually the person was poor, and an outcast of society. The movie, The Order, though in general probably pretty terrible was what got me started on it.

Another movie that inspired me to do some research into the macabre was The Others. In it, Nicole Kidman finds a "book of the dead", which was a book full of photos of dead people. A search for that on google will only bring up site on ancient Egypt. However, Victorian post mortem photography should get you a number of hits, including these. Creepy, no? But I also find them rather touching, that they would care so much to go through all the trouble of doing the pictures, or that they were so desperate to remember their loved ones in a peaceful state.

Well, that's the topic. My apologies to our faithful readers for my complete laziness.

Death time line

2007-10-14T13:58:00.000-04:00

Yes, I would certainly want to know how and when I was going to die.

I was surprised to read in earlier comments that more than one person would use this knowledge to take revenge on people who had hurt them. I think putting a finite time frame on my life (especially if it was relatively short) would help me finally get over past pain because it would mean I probably wouldn't have to risk of running into that person again. I would, instead, use the knowledge to influence my investing (I know that's nerdy, but how would nice would it be to know exactly how much retirement money you'll need and how much longer you have to work?) and to travel and spend time with the people I love the most. I'd want to spend my days as happy and busy as possible to keep my mind off my looming death and to suck the marrow out of the rest of my short days.

I've mentioned before on this space that I currently work on the block that separates the White House from the main World Bank office, and I live on Capital Hill. I've talked with my geographically similar friends many times about where we would want to be if The Bomb went off. Obviously, the first choice is to be as far away as possible. But if you're going to be in the blast zone, would you rather be killed instantly or live in horrible pain from radiation poisoning? Most of my friends said they'd rather die instantly and avoid the pain. But I would want to live. I don't care how much pain I was in, I would want that last bit of time to call or see the people I love one more time, to say goodbye and I love you. Plus, I figure, if it was really so intolerable that I wanted to die, I could always kill myself, on my own terms and by my own decision. And who knows? Maybe I could be saved.

If you could only know one thing about your death--the how or the when--which would you pick? I think I'd rather know the when so I could plan out the rest of my life to drain every once of enjoyment from it. I think if I only knew how I was going to die, it would make me too paranoid. What if I found out I was going to die in a plane crash? Wouldn't I avoid planes--not just for my own life, but for everyone else's sake who would be flying with me? Or what if it was some seemingly small disease--wouldn't I turn into a total hypochondriac?

I once wrote out my fantasy obituary. I'd highly recommend that as an exercise to anyone!

destiny, or prediction?

2007-10-12T01:30:00.000-04:00

If I had the choice of learning (or not) when and how my death would occur, I'd want to be told, but I would doubt, and then I'd probably kill my stubborn ass the day before just to prove "them" wrong. In science, one can't assume that even watching something take place doesn't necessarily affect the outcome. which brings up a point that was illustrated in the film "stranger than fiction" - if one knows about death's approach, one has the ability to try to avoid it. That makes me wonder: is it really knowledge? Or would one just become some demented freak trying desparately to convince him/herself that mortal existence is worthwhile? If all attempts to avoid the impending death prove futile, then what has the individual accomplished any more than an animal that only understands the race to save its own skin? And if one is able to miraculously cheat death, what good is that? In order to really, truly care so much about the time and place of death, one would have to be pretty selfish in imagining themself to be above the mortality of everyone else, or else insanely altruistic and only want to spend one's time helping others.
That, of course brings me to the question: If our purpose on Earth is to help others, then what exactly are the "others" here for?

Six Feet Under

2007-10-11T12:35:00.000-04:00

I am a little obsessed with death.

So, would I want to know when and how I would die? Hell yes I would! I think it would fuel my need to see the world a bit, and push my relationships with people. I might not take people for granted as much as I do. Frankly, I've been called an ice queen (the inspiration for last year's Halloween costume), so maybe my impending death would help remedy things. Of course, it could also fuel some new phobias or compulsions. Like what if you died from some disease you caught because you didn't wash your hands? I'd probably wash my hands 'til the skin came off.

And speaking of diseases, this might be old news to most of you, but I think this stuff is too cool. I'm buying this one and this one, and giving them to my friend Chad for his birthday, just so I can say I gave him syphilis and gon0hrrea.

Sorry about this post being late. I was going to do it last night, but I was really sick (still am, hence me being home right now writing this), and it was all I could do just to make myself stay awake long enough to watch Pushing Daisies. Hmm...which is perfect for this topic. Has anyone else seen this show? It's cute - quirky and weird. It's about a guy who can bring dead people back to life with a touch and put them back under (permanently) with another. However, he has to put them under within a minute of bringing them back, or someone else nearby dies.

Hmm...this one tending towards stream of consciousness. I guess that's what you end up with when I'm not feeling up to par.

Death Is Coming.

2007-10-08T15:25:00.000-04:00

It's October, the month of Halloween, and as such I decided to select a topic that lends itself handily to the macabre: death. Your death, to be exact. I have to admit that I found the inspiration for this topic on one of those lame MySpace surveys, but I have improved it somewhat. See, what I want to know is, if you could learn in advance the exact time, date and manner of your death - and know for a fact that it was accurate - would you want to know?

If you learned that you'd die in your sleep at the age of 103, would that cause you to change the way in which you lead your life? Would you take more risks? Or would you be more cautious? (After all, you wouldn't want a rash decision to make the intervening 60+ years hellish.)

If you learned that you would die fairly soon, would you try to change things? Even though you knew for a fact that Your Time was unalterable? Or would you simply try to make the best of the time you had left? And if so, how?

PS - No Physical Harm :-)

putin who?

2007-10-07T15:54:00.000-04:00

okay, so the subject is a little overstated. i have to admit though, that this topic is a little out of my league - i'm not very knowledgeable about russian anything, my main information source being jane's russia blog and a couple of linked articles. that said, i can sure express some opinions so here goes:
if the people let putin stay in power because of their lack of political motivation, that is their business. similarly if we, in the united states, don't utilize our power and vote, then to an extent it is our own fault that our government doesn't fully represent the wishes of the people. i am not in favor of a one or two-party system. i would love it if multiple parties were able to back candidates, giving us many choices of people for whom we could vote. yes, that would "split" the democrat and republican votes, but then each candidate would be able to earn votes based on their own merit and we wouldn't hear any stupid crap reasoning like: "at least he's not bush". i don't think we should vote for someone because they are the lesser of two evils. i think we should be able to vote for someone whose politics we actually support. i know it's not likely to ever happen, but i guess i'm a dreamer.
wow. that wasn't about russia. sorry.
so putin wants to remain in power and the people aren't doing anything about it. so? like stephanie said, there's no need for us to force other countries to adopt our political system. as long as russia isn't oppressing other countries, it's none of our business. look at china: their government supports some of the worst human rights programs in the world, but as long as they stay within their own country we do nothing about it besides an angry letter once in a while. and i think that's sad, but i also think that we have to be that way. it's bad enough that we're policing other countries in the world when they abuse each other, let alone if we were to invade just because we dislike what they're doing within their own borders. (i really didn't mean to tie this to iraq so i'm not even going to go there). basically, as long as russia is minding its own business, we should mind ours by not interfering. not that there's anything wrong with following the news. it's great to be knowledgeable. it's just not so great to force our opinions on other people. for example, when the chileans elected communist salvador allende to office, the u.s. self-righteously went in and "fixed" that, giving power to pinochet. i know that we dislike communism, but is pinochet really better? not for us, but for the people who voted not to have him as their leader. we should have stayed out.
yeah, i'm kind of a separatist - in a manner of speaking. i don't think that the u.s. should be responsible for taking care of everyone else. in a perfect world, the united nations (or some similar organization) would operate as moderater/mediator in the affairs of the nations of the world, and each nation would be free to run its own government.
wow again. i really have a hard time keeping to topic. feel free to comment on my tangents though.

Putin on the Ritz

2007-10-05T09:13:00.000-04:00

Well after reading that article, it's not hard to see why US relations with Russia would be so tense - he and Bush are very much alike. Both have a disregard for the constitution , and want to keep their hold on their position. Only difference is that Putin may actually be able to achieve his goal, whereas Jane pointed out earlier, there's no way in hell citizens in the US would stand for it. I could see Bush trying though - barricading himself in the White House, refusing to come out.

But what are we to do about it? The article talked about the US keeping a close eye on the elections to make sure everything was kosher. However, if the Russian people are really that apathetic, why should we do anything about it? Lord knows we don't need to invade another country and try to force it to our system of government.

As far as a one party system goes, well hell, why not let Putin just take over? If you've got only one major party that gets elected, and the people don't care, then how can you really change? I suppose that could be said about the US though. Yes, we have two parties, but most argue that they're not exactly dissimilar. We have other parties that try to run, and the Green party can put up a good showing, but most people don't want to vote Green because then the liberal votes are split, and someone like Bush gets elected. Ideally, we would have a 4 party system, the two moderates - Republican and Democrat, and two extremes (or, well as extreme as we can get) - Green and, I don't know, Crazy Redneck. Is there and extreme conservative party? I guess it might be the Christian Coalition.

Ahh, Putin.

2007-10-02T18:50:00.000-04:00

We've been wondering *how* exactly he would do it, and now it seems that we know. No, Putin hasn't ammended the Russian constitution in order to allow himself to run for a third term as President. Instead, he has announced that he may very well run for Prime Minister once he is no longer President. The new President (who will most likely be whomever Putin endorses) will have the ability to allow the Prime Minister to become the de facto ruler of Russia if he so chooses. This does not surprise me in the slightest, really. Back in July, I wrote an exceptionally long piece on my blog regarding Russian political history, showing that throughout the years of its existence as a state, Russia has repeatedly reverted to an authoritarian state every chance it got. My conclusion was that an authoritarian Putin is to be expected. If you're interested, that post is here.

The article in Slate says, It's as if George W. Bush decided to step down from office, run for Congress in 2008, declare himself speaker of the House, and declare that the speaker of the House would, from then on, take over the president's responsibilities, and run the executive branch. We would call that a de facto coup d'etat. In Russia, it's constitutional politics. But Slate (and all other news agencies who have reported on this) doesn't take into account the attitude of the Russian populace. While news agencies love to focus on pro-democracy demonstrations whenever and wherever they happen inside of Russia, the fact of the matter is, they don't happen very often, and when they do, they're pretty small. From what I've experienced during my times in Russia, this isn't because the masses are worried about government retribution, it's because they simply don't care. If George W. Bush decided to pull a de facto coup d'etat, people wouldn't stand for it. We'd protest. We'd rebell. Russians on the other hand would sigh and say, Oh, that's government for you.

Just Putin Around

2007-10-01T17:43:00.000-04:00

I'll confess to having very little knowledge of the Russian parliamentary system, but this story in the NY Times caught my eye today.

There are a few things this brings to mind:

1. What a frickin' HUGE loophole for getting around term limits! Not only can Putin retain much of his power and influence as premier, but he can also run for president again as long as someone else holds the post for the next term. And that person, the next president, seems to have been chosen (by Putin!!) simply to broadcast Putin's ideas anyway. I'm a big fan of mandatory roll-overs of power in government, so I'm having trouble seeing the benefits that this sort of set-up provides. Any one have an insight?

2. As Americans, we may be unhappy at times with both the democrats and the republicans, but at least we have (for all practical purposes) a two-party system. While flawed, that's still way more democratic than what the United Russia party's opposition leader is calling the "one-party system in Russia." In practice, how different is this than the current American system? Are there benefits to having one consistently dominant party?

3. How will Putin's hold on the Russian government affect diplomatic relations with the US? Obviously, things have been pretty tense lately, and the administration wants to blame Putin specifically for that. With him basically staying in power, will the US have to reformulate it's diplomacy strategy (I use those words loosely with this administration)?
3.a. This also brings to mind last week's debacle of miscommunicating the response to Ahmadinejad's request to lay a wreath on Ground Zero in New York. Instead of politely saying "sorry, no visitors allowed at this time," the NYPD first announced that they would have to consider it. Then, completely over-shadowing NYPD's correction, a ton of political candidates and officials condemned his request with words like "unacceptable" and "shockingly audacious." This reeks of diplomatic insensitivity to me. Laying a wreath at the site of a tragic event is exactly the right thing for visiting world leaders to do, just as our leaders should do it in other countries, no matter what these frothing-at-the-mouth media hounds think of the leader's personal values.

Just a few thoughts. And yours?

UPDATE: Here's an idea from Slate about the benefits of the Russian system... at least it's more interesting!

If you were expecting the next topic...

2007-10-01T15:41:00.001-04:00

...never fear! It will be here soon, I promise! In the meantime, enjoy this, which has nothing to do with anything.

days of birth parties

2007-09-29T09:28:00.000-04:00

i get do do one of these fun super-short posts this time because i'm an alien and my birthdays only happen every 32.6 earth years. so i wouldn't know what they're like.

You Say It's Your Birthday...

2007-09-28T13:51:00.000-04:00

It was my birthday almost two months ago. Hmm...somehow I think the Beatles had it right the other way. Oh well. Let me first say happy birthday to Jane and Nick (who's birthday was yesterday - Hey! Why don't you celebrate by posting something? *Sorry* Does that violate some birthday rule about harassing the person?) On to the topic!

All of my memorable birthdays are the horrible ones. I mean, yes, I've had fun birthdays, but the ones that stick out in my mind are the ones that were complete crap. Like my 13th birthday. My mother was a cook at a camp in the mountains in VA, so my brother and I had to spend the summer at the camp. Don't get me wrong - that summer was a blast, but my birthday sucked. My mom had told me there was some carnival in the next town, so that night we went, and found no carnival, and eventually saw a sign that said it was the next weekend. (Oh - important detail - my mother invited along the head chef who was a complete douche, and that night was no exception - I cant think of any specific grievance, but rather general rudeness). So she suggested bowling - closed, and then finally a movie. What pinnacle of cinematic history did we see, you ask? Angels in the Outfield, and we were about 20/30 minutes late. (This was before the 1/2 hr of previews and commercials we have now). Even back then I didn't want to see the movie. When it was done my mother dropped Jerry off at his house, and he stormed in before she got a chance to get out my cake. So, we went back to camp, and I left the cake out on the counter untouched. The next day, someone had picked off all the sugar lettering.

The other worst birthday also took place at camp. (Hmmm...there seems to be a pattern. *Note to self: avoid any camps around August from now on*) I've already talked about it on this blog - here. In case you don't want to follow my lovely little link, let me sum it up. I was at camp, the day of my birthday I laid in bed most of the day with horrible stomach pains that I toughed out 3 days before I was back home, and had to have my gall bladder removed. The worst part was that my grandma cooked my favorite meal and bought cheesecake for my birthday and I couldn't eat it cause I felt like shit.

This year was pretty sub par too, but that's because the people I chose to go bowling with (cast mates of Midsummer) have not sense of time or the decency to call when they're going to be ridiculously late. Seriously? Two of them - Danielle and Mandi - didn't show up 'til 10 and we were to meet at 7:30 - needless to say we were already done bowling).

Jane and Nick I hope you had better birthdays than I just described.

English and birthdays

2007-09-28T09:04:00.000-04:00

Hey guys! So sorry I've been absent-- I've been in 32 solid hous of training at work this week, my dad is visiting me, and my internet at home hasn't been working anyway since my neighbors are out of town. (I'm actually in training now, but don't have anything to do at the moment). I was really interested in the previous language topic, by the way, although I couldn't get the time to post on it. I'm a copyedtior (although you wouldn't be able to guess that from my posts here!), among other roles, so my approach to language is very different than, say, Caitlin's approach, and I find them both fascinating. I'm also one of those people who has worked dilligently to cover her southern accent-- my brother has lived in Columbia, SC for 6 or so years now and he's enhanced his to the point that I sometimes have trouble understanding him. Hard to believe we grew up in the same house listening to the same parents.

But on to this week's topic. I think my young birthdays were overall more interesting than my older birthdays. The older I get, the more I realize birthday parties are just eating and drinking with people I like, which isn't a whole lot different from a normal weekend. I tried getting people to skydive with me one year, but it was too expensive. I've already figured I wouldn't have a party this year-- too stressful.
But when I was little, my parties rocked. When I was 4 (I think) I had a pirate party, complete with cardboard pirate ship and my 7 foot tall uncle (maybe 6.5, but he was big!) dressed as a very authentic pirate.
Later, I had an Indiana Jones party with a treasure hunt through the yard. We made whips too by tying strips of leather through wooden sticks.
And one year, when I was a bit too young probably, I had a horror movie slumber party where we rented and watched The Blob, Night of the Living Dead, and (eek!) Psycho. At the end of Psycho, all the girls screamed like crazy and (it was about 2am) my mom called the phone from another extension. I picked up and she said in a creepy voice, "Hello, this is Norman Bates..." which made us scream even louder. After that, we all went to the bathroom in pairs, scared that someone would jump out and get us. I still insist on clear shower curtains.

Back to training now.

Happy Birthday to Me!

2007-09-27T15:10:00.000-04:00

Well, I am now officially 29 years old. As my birthday was a mere two days ago, I'm going to take the lazy route and refer you to my blog entry for it, in case you're curious as to how I spent the first day of my 29th year.

Other than that, I just have one comment to share on having a birthday in September: When I was a kid - especially in elementary school - I had few friends who stayed my close friends from year to year. Each year, my best friends came from those who were in my class at school. Of course, by late September, while school has been in session for four or five weeks, it's not really enough time to have developed good, solid friendships. In third grade (and I wrote a lengthy post on this here), there was a girl in my class who was a bully - she made my life a living hell - and yet if you hunt up the photos from my birthday party that year, there she is. She didn't start the bullying until early October. It still bugs me, twenty years later, that she was at my house, partaking of my hopsitality, weeks before turning into my worst nightmare. See, if my birthday had been just a little later on in the school year, she never would've been invited.

Birthday Fun

2007-09-25T01:17:00.000-04:00

Well, sorry that I have been a huge slacker lately, but I didn't want to tell my "druids" story for the 8 millionth time in blog format. I have kind of a mix between a Canadian accent and a southern accent. It's mainly a nowhere accent, though. Though goddamnit, if I hear anybody laugh when I say "sorry" again, I might snap. It's been fourteen years of that shit already.

Since I am posting this on Jane's birthday, I thought I would have the topic this week be memorable birthday stories. I know it's kind of lame, but the past few topics I've picked that I've thought were great were apparently duds, so whatev.

Anyway, I've only had a few really fun birthdays in my adult life. Since I've spent so much of my time in school or around people who are in school, my early May birthday is kind of a wrench. Everybody usually takes off at exactly the time my birthday rolls around. But there have been a couple of fun ones. Like once in Tallahassee I went to a Chinese buffet with a bunch of friends of mine and ate more than I've ever eaten before or since. Basically I was worried about a sign they had that said customers would be charged extra if they didn't finish everything, so after I got full a couple of bites into my 3rd or 4th plate I forced the rest down. I remember just getting really dizzy and wanting to puke it all back up. But that didn't seem very grateful to my friends who paid for the dinner. So I stuck with it and immediately gained 95 pounds.

Two birthdays ago was also pretty good. My girlfriend at the time threw together a bar party for me, which was fun except somebody brought a pinata full of candy. You guys might not know this about me, but I loves me some candy. So I think I ate half the pinata full of candy in addition to five or six beers. That was a bad combination and I later had to clean my girlfriend's car. I think I had to clean her car anyway. If she reads this she can corroborate the fact that I definitely cleaned her car.

Also, when I was 13 some friends and I went and saw The Sand Lot.

Those are lame stories. I guess the lesson is I am the worst BSG member.

Y'uns Have No Idea

2007-09-24T07:53:00.000-04:00

Language. I use it. Southern dialect? Creeping into my usage more and more. I'll write more on all of this later this evening, I thought I'd just go ahead and put in this small post so that I don't disrupt the order if Glenn decides to post the new topic before I have a chance to write.

**UPDATE**

Alright, so since posting that and reading the comments I've had time to think about some issues.

First, interestingly enough, most of my friends have a non-regional dialect. Or well, I guess more correctly, don't really have accents. I was raised in VA for the first half of my life, my grandparents on my mothers side are Yankees, and my parents don't have accents either. So, for most of my life I haven't really had one. However, I have found I am easily influenced by the people I am around, and tend to pick up mannerisms or certain sayings. So, for 4 yrs now (well and two others, but there was a gap in-between), I've worked with a couple of people who have Southern accents, and have been developing more of one myself. This comes out more at work because it seems friendlier. I don't know if that's because it's associated with southern hospitality, or whether people with southern accents are generally thought of as dumber, and therefore non-threatening. It bothers me somewhat. I was actually quite proud of my non-accent, but I get it back if I actually pay attention. I slip into southern when I get lazy.

I do say some words that are obviously not southernized. Like aunt. I pronounce it "awnt", whereas most people down here probably say "ant". Or pecan - I say "picahn", whereas most probably say "pee-can". I say soda, or the name of the particular soda I'd like, but I don't usually just offer or ask for a coke. I took Caitlin's little dialect test - not the one online though. She had one that had two similar sounding words - like cot and caught, and depending on how you pronounced them, there were markers for a certain southern accent. I'm pretty sure I don't have those markers.

As far as the term "y'uns" goes, I actually first heard it in TN, not PA, though most people associate it with that area. Apparently it is the plural form of "y'all", even though to me, "y'all" is already plural. I can't refer to a single person as "y'all", only "you", but I guess that is the magic of Tennessee. My friend Jeff was the first person I heard use that term. He had a pretty thick accent, and one of the church groups that came to the camp we worked at actually thought he had introduced himself as "Jif", like JIF peanut butter.

I don't have a problem with the words "dinner" or "supper" - they're interchangeable to me for the evening meal, though usually I just say dinner. I don't like it when it's used for the midday meal - that's "lunch", and nothing else. My grandmother often calls lunch "supper", and it irks me. She and her side of the family (my father's side) are from south GA. In fact, we still have farm land up there. She uses words like "yonder" and "dungarees", and we harass her to no end for it.

In closing - here's a hilarious quote from The Office I just saw the other night - not really to do with accents, but it's relevant:

Gareth: "My dad, for example, he's not as cosmopolitan or as educated as me and it can be embarrassing you know. He doesn't understand all the new trendy words - like he'll say 'poofs' instead of 'gays', 'birds' instead of 'women', 'darkies' instead of 'coloureds'."

On being a foreigner in my own neighborhood

2007-09-21T22:31:00.001-04:00

As someone who does a lot of traveling overseas, I have become accostomed to finiding myself in situations where I cannot understand 100% of what is being said around me. Depending on where I am and the context in which I find myself, sometimes I understand most, but not all, while many other time I understand fifty percent or less. When you live like that for extended periods, you find yourself developing coping mechanisms. One of these is the noncommittal response: a shrug of the shoulders and "mmmmm" while nodding the head. There's also the smile and nod or even the laugh and nod (although if you're ever traveling in Russia, I'd suggest avoiding the smiling/laughing as that might get miscronstrued as I want to sleep with you). Also, if it is obvious that you've been asked a question, sometimes smiling and nodding works then too (although then who knows what you're agreed to!) although a hapless smile and a shrug seems to get one out of these situations easily in a lot of places. Certainly, there are plenty of situations where using these techniques should be avoided, but when strangers on the street or distant acquaintances babble things at you in a foreign tongue, I've found that these tricks work well. That way you don't always come across as the imbecile foriegner who hasn't bothered to master the local tongue.

The accents of the people in my neighborhood here in the US are, in many cases, nearly unintelligible to me. The other day, the man who lives at the house behind me asked me a question four times before I understood him. The first three times, the only words I understood were "your momma." Now, my mom's over here a lot, and I figured there was a pretty good chance that that the answer to his question was yes, and I was just about to give up and smile and nod when I realized I'm in an English speaking neighborhood, I shouldn't have to do that! Finally, after asking me four times, I understood: Was it my mom who had asked him about his dog the other day?

Whenever I speak to my neighbors (which is pretty rare, and after the incident the other day, bound to be rarer) I find myself feeling as though I should emulate their speech patterns. I feel as though if I speak with proper English, I'm setting myself even further apart from them than I am already, like I'm trying to show through my words that I am somehow better than them. I was having a different conversation with the fellow who lives behind me yesterday, and he wanted to know why I wasn't married, why I didn't have a boyfriend, etc. His question, actually, was, Why you ain't got no man? and I found myself answering (without even thinking about it) I on't need no man! (And you're seeing that correctly, no "d" in "don't").

I love eavesdropping on people, and the people in my neighborhood are out in the street a lot. There's a tendency among my neighbors to shout (er, holla) jovially at one another, and I'm always trying to ascertain what's going on without actually having to stick my head out the door and see. Usually I have no clue. It's as though everyone is speaking a different language.

I spent a month in this house last summer, before heading off to Korea. After I left, my mom discovered that someone had written with their finger, in the dust on my trashcan white girl stay here. We debated whether or not it was a request (as in White girl, please stay here) or a statement of fact (There is a white girl who stays in this house). I choose to believe it was the latter.

Similarly, here's a conversation I had with a girl of about 10 who lives on my block:

Girl: I thought you was older.
Jane: Oh, you probably saw my mom. We look a lot alike.

Girl: Oh. Your momma stay wit you?

Jane: No, she lives a few miles down the road.

Linda, who started this topic off for us this week, mentioned that she got the idea for this topic from reading a recent post on my blog - the one about the crazy naked old dude in my house. Yeah, you should probably go read that, if you haven't already. I've been thinking about that incident, and wondering if there was something I did that gave the crazy old coot the impression that I would like to see him naked. Was there something I agreed to that I misunderstood? Did I smile at something that should have instead earned him a glare? Hard to know. (In case y'all are interested, he showed up a couple of days ago, knocking on my door. I didn't open it or say anything, and he went away.)

Also, because I just used the contraction y'all, I would like point out that English desperately needs a plural you, and I think y'all works just fine. So long as it's not contracted like ya'll, as that's just nonsensical.

A dialectology primer and some questions

2007-09-21T09:16:00.000-04:00

My friends, family, and acquaintances all know that there are two things in life that I care -- and TALK -- about most: jewellery and language. I am sure this bores everyone a whole lot, but the topic of language, at the very least, should be of immediate interest to everyone. It is an essential part of being human and at the root of many issues and problems that concern us.

First off, though, I'd just like to clarify a few things about dialects and language in general. (I feel at least a little qualified to do this because I minored in lingusitics at uni and my specific area of research for a special project my final year was dialectology.) Human language is split up into units called "languages." Languages are made up of different varieties. Regional varieties of a given language are called "dialects." There is a kind of human language we call the French language and there are many regional varieties (dialects) of French, for instance, Parisian French (the Standard) and Quebecois, the dialect of French spoken in Quebec.

Even those briefest and simplest of definitions are subject to much debate and give rise to great controversy. How do we define what is a language and what is a dialect? Two ideas, "mutual intelligibility" and political boundaries, come into play.

1) Danish speakers can understand Swedish, for the most part. Denmark and Sweden are separate countries. Danish and Swedish are separate languages.

2) Chinese is a language. Mandarin and Cantonese are two dialects of Chinese, but are not mutually intelligible.

Why are Danish and Swedish considered separate languages? Why are Mandarin and Cantonese dialects of the same language?

A second controversial topic is outlined in the example I gave for dialect. How is the standard determined? Why is Parisian the standard version of French that we learn in school? Why not Quebecois? Or, closer to home, why do we traditionally revere the English of Dan Rather and revile the speech of the natives of Alabama? I'd love to hear what people think about this.

Finally, I want to leave you with an example of language betraying community sensibilities (or lack thereof). Many people bemoan what is seen as today's politically correct culture. In my 25 years there have been some pretty marked changes in how we talk about sensitive topics. We used to say "handicapped" to describe someone confined to a wheelchair. Now we say "disabled," but there is a push to change that to "differently-abled." We used to say "Indian" for someone from the First Nations. Then we said "American Indian." Then we said "Native American." The New York Times says "American Indian" still, as far as I know. In Canada, we say "Native" or "First Nations" or "Aboriginal." In Florida, "eskimo" is acceptable when talking about natives of the far north. In Canada, it is generally taboo. We try to tailor our language and neutralize discriminatory terminology. We make room for acceptance (at least that's the idea) and attempt to revise our thinking through our speech. How far along is cultural sensitivity in other places? How do we compare these things, anyway? Is it offensive that our Scottish relatives go out for Chinese food and describe it as a "wee chinkee"? Are they wrong to say that? How about this...

Back in 1999-2000 I was living in Germany. We had a number of familiar US products available and my host family, in particular, were big fans of McDonald's. Just like in the US, McDonald's is constantly coming up with new deals, new prices, and new products to keep the Germans coming in to their stores. And, yes, they do have something called a Royale (with cheese). While I was there they introduced -- for a limited time only! -- a special sandwich with Asian flair called...

"Chicken McFu"

I kid you not. That struck me as both offensive and incredibly funny. And then I started seeing the billboards. There is a stereotype of Asians speaking Western languages that involves them confusing the sounds "l" and "r." There is a perfectly reasonable phonetic explanation for this problem, which I won't go into now. Suffice it to say that the Germans have noticed this quirk as well. Three of the Chicken McFu billboards read as follows

"LIESIG"
"GLOSS"
"SUPEL"

Each of these words is misspelled. In each, the "l" replaces the correct "r." They should read "riesig" ("huge"), "gross" (big), and "super" ("super").

I was absolutely scandalized seeing these things out on the Autobahn and pasted on the walls of the bus station. Again, what do YOU guys think? Does this reflect poorly on the Germans? Could you see an American firm getting away with this? (Abercrombie and Fitch tried something similar a few years back with a shirt that advertized a Chinese drycleaner: "Two Wongs can make it white".)

ETA: I haven't mentioned lexical variation at all (eg, "coke" vs. "pop" vs. "soda"), but if you are interested in that topic and are a NATIVE speaker of NORTH AMERICAN English, check out this survey: http://www.arts.mcgill.ca/programs/linguistics/faculty/boberg/survey.htm . That's a project my former prof and advisor runs with his sociolinguistics classes and he can always use more data.

a rose, they say, would smell as sweet...

2007-09-19T00:18:00.000-04:00

so i might be jumping the gun with my topic for the week, since i don't think everyone blogged last week, but i actually have a topic and a little bit of time and a decent connection all at once, so gun-jumping, here i go!
this week's topic was actually sparked by a comment in jane's blog about dialects, which caused me to become aware that when the guy at mcdonalds said "guy yep yuh", he was actually asking if he could help me (presumably by taking my order). so that led to a bunch of other thoughts about the english language - its uses, its evolution, dialects, etc.
i get to use many versions of english at work; i interact and communicate with young children, both educated and uneducated adults, and people whose first language is not english, and i find myself speaking differently around different people. for instance, my boss is somewhat of a grammarian. we say "shall" and "perhaps" and the like. we once had a debate over how one should express that another was behaving like a curmudgeon - then both went home and did some research. it turns out that when one behaves like a curmudgeon, one is displaying curmudgeonry. who would have guessed? my job also requires that i process in all our new staff members - from teeny-boppers beginning their first job to management staff with postgraduate degrees. i find myself referring to things as "cool" or "sucking" with many of the new hires. then of course, there are the few to whom i have the fun of explaining that when we ask for them to specify a race (for equal employment opportunity tracking purposes) one need not cross out the word "caucasian" and write in "white". you can bet i didn't mention curmudgeonry to the few, the proud, the needing to have paid attention in elementary school.
i do admit that i can be a bit of a language snob, but i digress. the point of the topic is to discuss how our language is so varied - accents, dialects, fun localized phrases, the whole gamut.
we can mention that in texas, when asked what kind of coke one would like, it is perfectly acceptable to reply "mountain dew", or that in ireland "good crack" means "lots of fun".
i know someone who was very offended when approached by a (presumably) homeless person in london and asked "fag?" (the unfortunately dirty person wanted a cigarette) and someone who was mortified when she learned that in the united states, if one asks to borrow a rubber, one will not be handed an eraser.
i highly doubt that i'm the only person to have experienced or been told about misunderstandings of this sort, so please share yours (for those who speak foreign languages, feel free to make comparisons among the way we phrase things, idioms, etc. as well).

My dream job is to work underpaid at a shitty bookstore

2007-09-14T01:41:00.001-04:00

Well, everybody knows my absolute dream job is to teach poetry at college and write poetry. So I guess I'll give some more fanciful dream jobs, or maybe some evolutionary history of my dream jobs.

Like Linda, I too wanted (or want) to be a rock star. But I was never really very good at putting together a full band. When I was 8 or 9, me and some friends put together the fullest band I would ever have in my life, The Rockets. We had two guitar (tennis racquet) players, two drummers (ice cream buckets) and me, the lead singer. We gave a neighborhood concert and a lot of people came. I almost didn't sing because I was scared, but then we belted out our hits "You're Gonna Rock All Night" and "Holy Macaroni." Then we never played again. Kids are fickle.

In high school I sort of learned how to play a real instrument. Most of the time I was in a "band" called Visual Purple with one other person, my friend Art. But we could never convince anybody to join our band, because we weren't part of the cool or grunge crowd. So mainly we goofed around and recorded a lot of songs. Some were not absolutely terrible. At one point I did convince a fringe member of the grunge crowd to start a band, and we then convinced a drummer and second guitarist to join up. So there were four of us. But then they kicked me out of the band because I wasn't cool or something. And then they never played again. High school kids are fickle.

In college my friend Dimitri and I started a "band" called The Vendetta Smiths. I thought we were great because for once there were drums under my guitars. But it turns out I was wrong. We were terrible. So I moved away and learned how to become a better songwriter and graduate college. Then I moved back and I think we had some halfway decent songs. We changed our name to The Act Of Radio. Check out our myspace. We still couldn't ever convince anybody else to join up. Then I moved and we never played again. College graduates are fickle.

So anyway, I think I'd still like to be in a band. I'm thinking our name could be Je Voudrais Death or The Draculamen. I also like The Friends Of Science.

Once I wanted to be a filmmaker, too, but that didn't pan out and somehow I started writing poems. That story is long and boring, though. And there's only enough room on this post for one long and boring story.

In conclusion, the end. I would also like to be an actor. Or a fighter pilot.

Jobs I don't have

2007-09-13T11:31:00.000-04:00

When I was little (ok, still now) I was really into Indiana Jones and I wanted to be an archeologist. I understood that most archeologists don't need to carry bull whips on their hips at all times to help them get out of life-threatening situations, that most likely no one would try to rip my still beating heart from my chest, and that archeologists don't always 'get the girl' in the end (even if she doesn't turn out to be a Nazi), but it still seemed cool. Researching, digging, discovering, writing... awesome.

I didn't end up taking very many anthropology courses in college, so this sort of faded by the way side. I also didn't take many (any) acting or singing courses so my other dream of starring in a Broadway musical has also fallen off. That's too bad.

Right now, my dream job would be to open a used bookstore, maybe with a cafe where people would feel comfortable talking and meeting each other and collaborating on artistic works or writing together. I could hang out there and chat all day, and feature new books from my friends in a big display. Not to mention my own books. I could set my own hours, paint the walls however I wanted, wear jeans to work, hire people with visable tattoos, whatever. Now... what could I call it?

really dreamin' here...

2007-09-11T22:13:00.000-04:00

i want to be a rock star. seriously. i keep writing songs, and i love to sing them, but i don't have a band, and i don't play any instruments worth anything. so it's a dream that could happen if an alterna-band also flies out of Stephanie's butt (not that i'd wish that on you or anything).
i suppose the more realistic dream job i have involves combining the foster kid program with the animal rescue program. foster kids need love and need to learn empathy and responsibility: rescued animals have love to give and need to be taken care of. I have in mind a summer camp type set-up at a sort of ranch. the foster/troubled kids could come out for a couple of weeks and learn how to take care of the critters (with supervision of course). it would give foster parents a needed break, while the foster kids help out at the "shelter" (which would comprise of fairly tolerant/stable/adoptable animals from other shelters and rescue groups). i also have in mind a few special "resident" animals trained to stay with their respective kid (like a seeing eye dog) and be their "best friend" for a while. i'd have to do some serious fundraising, but i'm pretty sure we could get some vet and social services interns to do most of that kind of work (a cool offshoot would be to grant scholarships to the interns who do a great job, and possibly to some of the older kids, but that would require serious donations). people from the outside world could come in and adopt animals, and the kids could help with profiling ("rusty likes his belly rubbed" etc.). some of the foster kids might end up with a pet if their foster parents could handle it, but if not - all the more reason to come back next summer and mentor another foster kid at the program.
yeah, i have it all thought out. i've volunteered at a bunch of animal orgainzations and i'm working for a non-profit group right now, so in another dozen years or so i might know what i'm doing enough to get something off the ground. in the meantime, it's a pretty cool dream.
i also wouldn't mind winning the lottery and retiring early.

Let Me Put It This Way - I Have an Extensive Collection of Nametags and Hairnets

2007-09-10T20:36:00.000-04:00

I hope everyone enjoyed the little vacation. I think last week was Jane's week for the topic, but as she was relocating across continents, I think we can forgive her. Frankly, I've been completely unmotivated to write on this blog - I'm not entirely sure why, but I'm soldiering on, and I've decided that this week's topic is dream jobs.

When I was a kid I wanted to be all sorts of things - veterinarian, marine biologist, ballet dancer, lawyer, Rogue from Xmen- everything under the sun. Things haven't changed much. I find myself constantly pondering the possibilities as I try to decide what I want to do when I leave the library. (I also decided at one time that I had Wolverine's mutant ability to heal quickly, but that's another post) Most of the options involve going back to school for any number of topics - law, interior design, library science, cosmetology - even being a mortician (is that mortuary science?) - but nothing seems to stick. (Side note : for awhile there my choices seemed influenced by what I watched on TV - I was really into Miami Ink, and then wanted to go into tattooing. The mortician? Totally Six Feet Under - thankfully I seemed to get over that phase before I started watching Dexter or Weeds) However, everyone has their dream jobs that they would love, but maybe never really considered doing.

My two dream jobs are storm chaser, or to study sharks (on offshoot of that marine biologist thing I guess). No, I did not get the idea to be a storm chaser from the movie Twister. I actually remember watching movies about storm chasers at the science museum when I was a kid. And well, I've had a love affair with Shark Week for as long as I can remember. Both jobs kinda have that element of danger. Unfortunately, both involve science, which I was never good at. Don't get me wrong - I loved my science classes, I just was never really disciplined enough to do my experiments properly. Part of that is laziness, part of it was natural curiosity - to see what would happen if I didn't follow the directions.

If I'm being honest though, my dream job would be getting to jet set around and take pics for a travel magazine or something. What? It could happen - shyeah - and monkeys might fly out of my butt.

For real back to school

2007-09-02T12:17:00.000-04:00

Well, I don't really have the blues that school started again, since I basically like graduate school. However, over the summer as some of you may know I was job hunting. Just for a summer job. Teaching college is enough for me during the year. But nobody would hire me, except Kroger for one day. I've told the story a bunch of times, but basically they thought I was black (which I guess I didn't mind, except it was a little awkward. I've had to correct people on my ethnic background a lot in my life, and it's always a little embarrassing), and also they refused to tell me how much I would be getting paid. Every time I asked them they would act like it was some ridiculous, unrealistic question. So I quit.

But then I got hired by Bor- I mean, Shmorders (company blog policy forbids us to use the name of the store in a blog. Seriously.), which would be fine, except it was A WEEK BEFORE SCHOOL STARTED. So I've been working there, but I don't know if I can keep it. On the bright side, I don't really care about the job (unlike every motherfucker who works there, for some reason - we get paid $7.50/hr), so I basically just roll my eyes and act sarcastic to customers a lot. Those of you who know me know that it takes me a long time to quit a job. Like when I tried to quit Publix and the manager cried, so I said I'd keep working there. For some reason I feel honor-bound to this Unnamed Mega Book Store. I mean, they're paying us $7.50/hr, which is garbage.

So maybe I'll quit one day. Who knows? The job sucks and I wish I had it three months ago. But too late.

back to school blues

2007-09-01T23:06:00.000-04:00

my new teacher is nice. She said write what we did this Summer. We went to Sea World. There were dolfins and sharks and manatnees. it was fun. Then we went to the beach. I burned all over like a lobster. My new house is bigger and the cats excape all the time. we moved into my new house. i like it a lot. i went to work lots of times. it's not as fun as the beach. splash! That's what the waves say. We ate at In & Out cheeseburgers. I wanted ice cream but we were out. My boss at work said thank goodness summer camp is over now we can relax.

Ha ha - like I go to school.

Really I moved and helped my husband start up his new business. I worked at my paid job at the YMCA hiring and then terminating all the summer camp staff, and I worked at my volunteer job cleaning up poop at the wildlife rehabilitation center (and playing with critters). The summer flew by, and I'm sad that it's gone because I didn't go on vacation yet.

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

2007-09-01T09:52:00.001-04:00

An essay by Stephanie Tyson (the 5 yr old part of me)

I was in a play. It was called a Midsummer Night's Dream. It was written a long time ago by some guy called Billy Shakespeare. He must have talked real funny because the lines we had to say were really weird. I was queen of the fairies and got to wear a pretty dress. (But no wings - boo). I got to make a lot of new friends. They are all pretty strange, but that's ok because I am too. Not a lot of people came to see our show, but we still had fun. Oh - I almost forgot - I got to paint the set and the sign outside. People said I did a real good job, and I got a gold star.

The rest of my summer was pretty boring. I had to work in a library everyday.
The end.

South Korean Summer

2007-08-29T09:50:00.000-04:00

It's interesting to think about how, for so many people, summer is a time of rest and relaxation, while September is the time to get back to work. For me this year, it's essentially the opposite. Not only did I work all summer, but I taught summer intensive classes too! (Ok, so my schedule wasn't that intensive or anything, but still...) Plus, as of tomorrow at 9:15pm, I will have NO MORE work related responsibilities here in Korea. AND my plans for September include... doing nothing. Glorious!

That being said, I most certainly did do some interesting things over the course of my summer... but, being the blogging-obsessed geek that I am, I have already written about them extensively elsewhere. However, on the off chance you haven't read those posts, here are the highlights of what I did with my free time this summer: I went to Busan and GyeongJu, I attended a mud festival and a fireworks festival, and I visited a Korean Folk Village. So check those links out and enjoy!

P.S. I'll be back in the States in 8 days. Can you believe that??

Back-to-School essay

2007-08-27T20:29:00.000-04:00

The ol' Supergroup here has been a little sparse. Not just the bloggers, but even our regular commenters have been slacking on the job! I would like to think that that's because everyone is out having fabulous summer adventures, and not because we got too boring to endure. Nah, it's probably not that (right??).

What have you been doing, Oh Readers and Bloggers? Next weekend is Labor Day, which, for lack of any other reason for existing, marks the unofficial ends of prime summer vacation time. The kiddies (and teachers) are going back to school, Congress is back in session, these fancy-ass euro-asian month long vacations (jealous!) are drawing to a close, and now it's time to reflect on how we spent our time-- how we matured, how we devolved, how we created stories to tell our grandchildren (with more embellishment here and less here, here, and here).

As I’ve mentioned previously, my Big Adventure this year was my 9/10-day trip to Japan (9 days there, but 10 counting travel). During this action-packed trip I visited Tokyo (karaoke!!), Kawagoe (Fudomyo!!), Kamakura (Zen gardens!!), Omiya (yukatas!!), Kyoto (big rocks!!), and Mt. Fuji (sunrise over clouds!!). A small selection of my over 460 photos are available here, but even they can’t do it justice. As with any great experience, I saw, did, ate, and learned things that have already affected my view on life and the assumptions of my culture.

I spent several weekends in Princeton, New Jersey, when my boyfriend, William, was living there, but now he has moved farther away so I don’t have to drive to central Jersey anymore. That’s the good side. The bad side, obviously, is that he’s farther away and I don’t get to see him as often. But he’s coming to Washington this weekend!

Last weekend I went to Dewey Beach in Delaware. As a Florida girl, it took me a while to get over the idea of traveling to Delaware, of all places, to go to the beach, but it was actually really nice. We went to a beach in a state park that was well maintained, sandy, and had good waves and cool water. I was a little worried about all the sunshine because the previous weekend I went to Front Royal and went tubing down the Shenandoah River. Four hours of sunshine are a little much for my northern european skin tone, and I roasted. But I applied 50 SPF suntan lotion this weekend about every 30 minutes and did fine (although I was peeling quite a bit, ewwwww).

I also took a trip back home for just over 24 hours for a friend's wedding in early July. This was a great amount of time to be there, although it was pretty expensive. I got in, hung out with my parents, went to the wedding with another friend, and left the next afternoon. The friend who got married had a bachelorette party earlier in the summer in Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia, where I had lots of outdoor fun and learned about John Brown, too!

And even without leaving DC, I got to do cool stuff! My mom came to visit for about a week and we visited Arlington Cemetery, Harper’s Ferry, and saw the family. Later, I went to the DC United game that was David Beckham’s MLS debut (swoon!), and my work softball team won the league championship!!

Damn, it’s been a busy 3 months!!

Montezuma's Revenge

2007-08-27T16:50:00.000-04:00

I can't say I've ever felt any need to see revenge on anyone. Well, if I have, those revenge feelings have been of the very short variety- usually on the highway (you know, when that guy in the big SUV cuts me off and almost kills me, and I want to seek revenge by pulling a California stop on him and making him crash and explode in bloody fiery highway death- or, at least, I want to re-cut him off myself to get him back). I guess nothing has been done to me that has made me want to seek revenge. I suppose were I marooned on a lifeless planet and my wife was killed as a result I might want to seek a little revenge on someone.

By the way, I have a new blog that I hope everyone will enjoy. I won't be going into politics so as to try and avoid any flame wars or cyber-stalkers. Cheers.

Revenge, The Woods, and Almost Dying in Aforementioned Woods

2007-08-27T01:49:00.001-04:00

Ok, so this is a pretty hefty title to be throwing at you guys first thing in the morning, evening, or just after lunch, but it pretty much sums up what's been going on in my world the last month or so (assuming you take out the bit about revenge and added in a month long vacation, two weeks with the family in Kyoto, a backpacking trip gone awry, studying an insane amount for both an upcoming Japanese Test as well as the GRE, attending a zen meditation group at 6:30 in the morning, eating A LOT of toast, drinking and fireworks at the river, playing with my nipples, playing with YOUR nipples, then back to mine, now the cow's, a passing sparrow's, the dial on the radio, eating more toast, a trip to Hiroshima to partake in a peace commemoration, leaving thoroughly disturbed and disgusted at the destructive power of humanity and our war toys, then a trip to the brewery to learn about the process of making everyone's favorite breakfast, then a baseball game, more nipples, toast, and other assorted activities (don't worry, I won't list them all for fear of boring you)).

But wait!!! This is supposed to be about revenge, that sweet and acidic nectar which flows thick and strong in our western (or eastern) blood like the grease from McDonalds that clogs our arteries, not really flowing at all but kind of stagnating there and congealing like Sylvester Stalone's face (please don't tell him I said that!). By the way reader, I was only joking about having played with your nipples over the last month. Unless you are Glenn, on whose splendiferous man measels I went to town!... to town I tell you.

Oh yeah, revenge. Like... this one time? I was at the mall? And uhm... this guy I know? Who my best friend hooked up with? Was all like ... lets hook up? And even though he was dating my best friend who I knew since we were in like the third grade???? I still totally did it! Which is kind of like revenge, because now she's not really my friend anymore since she got leprosy? and had to move to an island?! I know right!! But she always did have? like lots of pimples? so I kind of knew she would end up at a leprosy resort anyway. But I kind of hate her now even more than when she was my best friend because one time she got to see Brad Pitt. He is soooo hot! Ohmygod I know!!!! But she only saw him through the glass in her cage, so I guess its ok. Oh my GOD! That's kind of like revenge too! Wow!?!? I really like talking about revenge?!

Yep, thats about all I've got for you all on this one. That and a big fat apology for having missed so many days. Weeks! But hey, I'll make it up to you. You are all allowed in my club that I just started. I promise it is a great club, great enough that you will totally forgive me if you are in it.

Its called the "Let's forgive Martin for being a lazy jerk who ruins our blog by talking about nipples and not even telling us the story about how he almost died in the woods. Because we all know he's really just a sensitive 90's guy trying charleston his way through this crazy world of Jams and Hyper-color t-shirts and back to his own time where he will be appreciated for his sensitivity and not pummeled for not knowing how to dance the hammer." You guys are totally in my club now. No turning back.

Hey, don't look at me like that. Its not like I'm the one who made you join! HOpe all is well in cyber land (and in your real lives too!)

She Wants Revenge

2007-08-26T17:39:00.000-04:00

So if you use revenge to raise money, is it still bad?

Because I've always had an idea for a fundraiser for the library that was kinda our chance to get back at our patrons - celebrity boxing. (OK - that should really be "celebrity" because it's just my coworkers, but we get recognized everywhere). So the deal is this - the employees get to pick patrons that we want to beat the crap out of, and if they agree, we box and charge admission. Patrons can also pay to box any employee that they want to . We could also have the Friends of the Library run a betting station. It's genius! Well, except for the fact that I'd probably get all the pervy guys who would like me beating them a little too much.

Until then I am left with only 2 ways to exact revenge on the patrons that have crossed me:

1. Kill them with kindness, and hope that somewhere in their tiny brains or shriveled hearts they feel a pang of regret for being a jackass.

2. Be an evil bitch and brutally enforce every rule in the library. See - normally I'm a little lax. If a cell phone goes off, and the conversation lasts less than 2 minutes, I let it slide. Kids get a little rowdy in the quiet section, as long as it doesn't seem to be disturbing anyone - I can let it go awhile. However, cross me once, and I turn into the library Nazi - making people go to the lobby every time a phone goes off, bringing up the issue of fines every time they check out - I can be a bit of a bother when I want to. However, I am just being totally professional and enforcing rules - nothing more.

not so sweet

2007-08-25T17:37:00.000-04:00

the world's best revenge:
i once got to have a guy who had cheated on me walk in on me with his brother the "morning after"... i felt horrible about it from that first second. oh, but imagining punching all the mean people... that'll keep me going for days.

Hatred and Revenge...

2007-08-23T23:49:00.000-04:00

...are self destructive, and I will not touch them.

Ah, sweet revenge

2007-08-21T18:13:00.001-04:00

I’ve had several conversations lately with various men about how long women can hold grudges. I’m talking years, decades even. I know I’m one of these women, and I know how freaking long I’m willing to hold grudges.

After a while, though, I stop planning revenge. My grudge turns into a dull hatred, a negative reflex upon being reminded of a particular person. The way the mention a certain type of food can get stuck in your throat after you’ve gotten food poisoning from it. When I see these people face-to-face, I usually just ignore them, but not in an overt way. I may ask them to pass the salt, or I may say ‘pardon me’ if they’re in the way, but I don’t ask them any personal, direct questions and rarely look at their faces.

But I will admit to entertaining some pretty awful revenge fantasies. Although for most people I just imagine all their friends leaving them to hang out with me or something, there are a few people I wanted much more severe revenge against. One person I imagined not only hitting with my car (then reversing to hit him again), but I actually hoped that next time I saw him I would have something heavy and blunt available, like a shovel maybe, and smack him in the head with it.

I’m a little aggressive, I’ll admit, but I’ve never intentionally hurt anyone. I think part of the joy and freedom in these fantasies is that I was nearly certain I would never see this person again. Plus, those of you that know that situation understand how royally abused I was and how long (in years) it has taken me to get over some of the emotional (and other) baggage I was left with.

And if I saw him today? I’d still consider hitting him in the face, but probably with my fist instead of a shovel. If I saw him sleeping on the street (the place I most likely expect him to appear), I’d probably kick him, but not suffocate him. See? I’m maturing! Who knows? Maybe one day I’ll be over it all enough to simply ignore him as if he were an otherwise decent human being.

Revenge!

2007-08-20T01:05:00.000-04:00

A week or so ago I was looking through some old correspondence with a girl I used to like. Anyway, it reminded me of some of the feelings I had whenever the relationship or whatever it was ended. Basically, it ended like most of my relationships: she found somebody she liked better than me, and I was crushed. No big deal now, but at the time, (as I'm sure many of us have felt) I was filled with thoughts of revenge. Not revenge like "I'm going to let the air out of her tires, that'll show her not to break my heart," or "I'm going to burn down her home, then she'll see I'm the one," but emotional revenge. That is, I was miserable and heartbroken, and I felt that if she was miserable and heartbroken, too, it would make me feel better. So basically I wanted either her new relationship to end horribly, or for me to immediately meet some woman who was a million times nicer and hotter as though that would break her heart somehow.

Well, neither of these scenarios ever happened, and since I'm now in a place when I don't feel any kind of ill will toward anybody I can look back and say that it was pretty dumb of me to want any kind of revenge, emotional or otherwise. It wouldn't have made me feel better. Probably. But for some reason, we seem as a culture wired to desire vengeance. At some point in the future I'll probably have a girl leave me for some better guy, and I'll feel the same things. The only reason I'm remotely interested in going to my high school reunion is for revenge. (Psychological. Like if I was a millionaire or famous I could rub it in everybody's face that I hated). Many (of my students, anyway) would argue that the reason we're in Iraq is to get back at "them" for what they did to us on 9/11.

Where does this come from? Are we just a culture of revenge? Certainly, it's not just America. Look at all the great Japanese or Italian revenge films. Is it humans? So this week's topic is revenge. Feel free to take the philosophical route with it, but I think hearing people's actual revenge stories would be very interesting, too. The only revenge I've ever actually gotten is in poetry form. Or the time there was this girl we all hated in Tallahassee we called Punk Rock Amy, so I made her into an unflattering character in Weed Time. Not that she ever saw Weed Time. Or knew that we called her Punk Rock Amy. Or would have cared. She probably just would have punched and/or flashed me, which is basically how she rolled all the time anyway.

PS - This revenge thing has nothing to do with my most recent ended relationship, which ended on good terms. There's no ill will there. There might be annoyed will if I stub my toe on these boxes again. But that's my own clumsy fault.

PPS - The situation can basically be applied to almost every other time I liked a girl and she broke my heart. So nobody take this personally or anything if you happen to be a girl I liked and broke my heart at some point. I probably got some good poems out of it.

PPPS - Courtesy of Nick:

Weird Food

2007-08-18T12:41:00.000-04:00

Sorry to take so long. I just started a new job. Plus, BSG has been kind of sparse lately. We should change that.

Well, I don't really have weird snack foods I like, but I have plenty of food I like people might consider weird. For instance, I love kimchi. Well, maybe love is not the right word. Every time I eat it, I'm like "Wow, this is so gross. But I can't stop eating it!" Which is probably the best reaction for a food that is buried in a jar before one eats it.

Also, I love eating pho, a Vietnamese noodle dish. Which isn't weird in itself, but whenever I go to a few of the good pho places around town, I always get the one that has tripe and tendon in it. In my youth I would have said totally gross. But I guess in my youth I also would have said Sepultura is one of the best bands ever. So young Glenn was dumb for a lot of reasons.

There's a Mexican restaurant here called La Tapatia that has great and cheap burritos. Usually I get the lengua (tongue) burrito or the birria (goat) burrito. Some of my friends are grossed out by that, but I say I like to pretend like I'm french kissing my burrito. Is there anything really wrong with that? The answer is no. No there's not.

None of these foods are snack foods, I guess, and none are especially weird. So I guess I failed on this week's topic. As for global warming, of course politicians talk about it for their own benefit. However, most scientists talk about it for the benefit of science, and the majority of them are in agreement that human activity on earth is changing the climate. Who knows if it's for the better or worse? But there's no harm in trying to be more conservative with energy and resources. Because most of you would hate it if the Earth got so hot that all that unpopulated area in Canada became prime real estate, and then everybody would emigrate there and it would get all its NHL teams back. Actually, now that I think about it, fuck the earth. I'm leaving the a/c on when I go out today. Go Winnipeg Jets! Stanley Cup 2015!

for fun/or for serious: you decide

2007-08-15T21:14:00.000-04:00

so i know this is random, but i'm thinking weird snacks would be a fun topic. i just ate applesauce with maple syrup, pecans, and crunched up pretzels - and enjoyed every bite. then i started thinking about all the other random combinations that have turned out to be really yummy - carrot sticks dipped in nutella, tater tots in cream of anything soup, and i know that chips in a sandwich has been done before, but can i just say yum!
if we want to be serious, we can also blog about global warming. i'm constantly amused by all the people who believed gore's movie. now i know that our average temperatures are going up and all, but rumor has it that gore's "carbon offsets" mostly go to Generation Investment Management, a company he himself chairs. It would have been more honest to just make a commercial for the company instead of pretending Gore is actually eco-friendly in his own day-to-day life. Back to the movie though: the filthy river that's all polluted with mining byproducts... well, it's just barely downstream from a mining operation on his own land (the Gore farm in Carthage, Tenn.). I hear that the Tennessee Dept. of Environment and Conservation has twice failed the mine in zinc monitoring tests, and last year, served the mine operation notice that it was in violation of the Tennessee Water Quality Control Act. If Gore really wanted to clean up the environment, he could have, oh, not renewed the mining lease. Now that we all have filthy water, we'll have to drink bottled water, and http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=070815124541.xzix4g4s&show_article=1 says that's going to cause more global warming. for shame, al!
of course, then we get to talk about why global warming is so bad:
http://heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=14022
oh, wait - if global warming (losing some coast land, and yes, some people's homes, etc.) is holding off another ice age (glaciers covering half of the earth, drastically reducing the amount of arable land for producing crops)... I say crank up the a/c! I think that there's enough time before the flooding for most of the coastal folks to plan to move inland, and that's probably much lesser of an evil than going back to frigidity and only enough resources to support about 5 million people. hmmmm. i wonder if any of us non-fabulously wealthy people would get to be in that 5 mil.
so now's the part where i beg commenters to have a sense of humor and understand that people freaking out about global warming and then driving their SUVs to the store a half mile away is all pretty ironic and that i don't actually want the ice caps to melt. Then you all get to argue away. i'm sure i'll come up with some clever retorts after i've had a nap, and maybe a weird snack.

Not sure what happened here...

2007-08-15T13:21:00.001-04:00

but it's not a bad time for a summer break.

I saw this today, burst out laughing, and decided to share it with the group (especially those group members highly interested in who does what to whom in public restrooms). The quote below is from a Slate story about hypocrisy.

"God's latest gift to columnists and standup comedians is Florida legislator Bob Allen, arrested this summer in a public restroom for offering an undercover cop $20 and a blow job (yes, that's $20 and a blow job, not $20 for a blow job). This story has everything. First, there's Allen's risible defense—that as the only white guy in the men's room, he got scared and needed a way to fit in. Then there are the exquisite details, like Allen's Web page, which lists his sole recreational interest as "water sports." And the crowning glory: Allen's long history as a staunch defender of family values, including an attempt to outlaw masturbation in the presence of a consenting adult. Oh, the hypocrisy!"

Almost perfectly cast

2007-08-10T11:55:00.000-04:00

For years I wished that someone would come along and create a film version of the Lord of the Rings that would do justice to the books... and then Peter Jackson did. I loved his LOTR films. Yes, there are plenty of things that appear in the books which didn't make it into the movie. (How many people who just want to see an action flick would get into action-hero Aragorn reciting poetry? Or that diversion with Tom Bombadil? Great writing, but not essential to the plot. Of course, I'm still disappointed that there was no Scouring of the Shire, as I felt that chapter exemplified the growth of its characters over the course of the story. I'm also annoyed that Jackson didn't do more to show that Eowyn and Faramir fall in love, other than having them stand next to one another while smiling.) Yes, there were some scenes which weren't actually penned by Tolkien (Elves coming to Helm's Deep? Arwen kicking ass? Faramir taking Frodo to Osgiliath?) but which I felt did work well into a movie.

I've mentioned before how absolutely thrilled I was with Peter Jackson's choice of Orlando Bloom for Legolas in his LOTR trilogy... and I think Jackson did a splendiferous job in his casting choices for LOTR *except* for his choice of Liv Tyler as Arwen. Yeah, he gets points for giving her a sword and letting her save Frodo from the Ringwraiths, but Liv Tyler? For those who never read the books, Arwen is supposedly the most beautiful woman (er, elf) on the planet. Can you honestly tell me that this chick is the most beautiful woman you've ever seen?

I'm not entirely sure who I would choose as the most beautiful woman in the world (suggestions?) but not Liv!

For some reason she was also cast as Tatyana in the 1999 screen adaptation of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin. As a lover of Russian lit and language, I've read Onegin quite a few times (in both English and Russian, I might add). For those who aren't familiar with the story, there's this rich cat Onegin who is essentially above it all - love, duty, responsibility - he's wholly disinterested... and then he runs across this Tatyana chick and she totally discombobulates his reality. He falls hard. Again... Liv Tyler?? Are you kidding me?

stephanie took my movie choice

2007-08-09T22:20:00.001-04:00

i would so love to see american gods made into a film. the author, however, has declined and insists that it wouldn't work as a movie (at comic-con san diego a couple of years ago). so sad! that said, i can sure comment on the casting of stardust! michelle pfeiffer? give me a break! the witch is supposed to be a chilling, alluring, haughty, and terribly frightened semi-sympathetic character. bah! maybe nicole kidman could pull off the witch role, or possibly (in a bit of a stretch) angelina jolie (no, this isn't a commentary on her life, just on what she can convey as an actress). i have never seen that much depth in michelle pfeiffer.
i like the choice of an unknown as the unlikely hero. i don't think deniro fits in the story at all though. i think crispin glover might be fun (think charlie's angels) as the duke, and although i don't think claire danes is a bad choice for the star, i also think that she's a little old for the role. i don't watch enough teenager movies/shows to have someone in mind though. and there went the train of thought... i'll try to update later.
with regard to what glenn posted: there are so few books made into movies in which the movies are better, but i think there are even fewer novelizations that come even close to being as good as the movie - even when they're written by the screenwriter (braveheart, anyone?). it just goes to show how incredibly important a good director is to the overall film. not that i don't think people know that, but i've been thinking about it.
i thought that the first narnia movie was thiiiiis close to doing the book justice (too much christian push - c.s. lewis had a little of it in there, but they took it too far). amen to most of glenn's list (does this mean i don't have to read out of sight, since the movie was so great?) "the sign says shut the fuck up..." it just doesn't get better than that! i'd also like to add that 300 was an amazing adaptation of the graphic novel, and that baz luhrman's romeo and juliet was, not better than shakespeare's original, but the first time i was able to see a performance set like a play - the extravagant costumes, the dancing, the monologues... i feel like it was a pretty faithful modern-style version of how the original play would have appeared to old globe audiences.
and there's my post - a day late, and a dollar short. can anyone loan me a dollar?

A message from Neil Gaiman

2007-08-09T03:00:00.000-04:00

Since this *definitely* fits in with our topic, I just wanted to link you guys to this podcast, in which Neil Gaiman discusses the movie-ization of his book, Stardust.

Movies Vs. Books

2007-08-09T02:39:00.000-04:00

Hey, Steph, congratulations on getting BSG's 200th post. And your birthday, too. I mean, not congratulations, but happy birthday.

I'm going to take this in a little bit of a different direction. As many of you know, the only books I read are poetry books (and those pretty much never get made into movies unless they are by Homer or whoever the hell came up with Beowulf) and comic books (which pretty much always get made into movies that suck with the exceptions of Batman Begins, the original Superman, Spider-man 2, X-Men 2, Hellboy, Constantine, and Sin City).

But I want to take this opportunity to explain something about me, books, and movies. You see, everybody is always telling me I need to read the Harry Potter books. I always tell them that I don't need to, because they're making them all into movies. Same with Lord of the Rings. Why would I invest hundreds of pages of my potentially poetry/comic book reading time in a novel if they're just going to make it into a movie that I can watch in two hours? I know this rationale is flimsy, especially coming from somebody who is in graduate school for English. But if I'm going to read fiction (which I rarely do, and when I do it is not in novel form because I have ADD), then I am going to read fiction with literary merit. There. I said it. Sorry. I'm a big jerk. This isn't just because of personal preference though (since my personal preference is to watch a movie or read poems), but just academic necessity. In six years when I am done with school I'll need to apply for jobs and demonstrate that I have a pretty deep knowledge of so-called literature, and I doubt they'll ask me questions about hobbits or Hogwarts in my interviews.

Ok, you guys got me. I'm just lazy is the real reason I don't read novels.

To close this out, I want to mention that my favorite book, The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, has already been turned into a shitty movie. Which goes along with what people say about movies adapted from books. However, I do think that there are examples where movies take on a life of their own and surpass the books they're based on (or at least do something completely different but equally great). So here's my brief list.

Every Kubrick Movie
Blade Runner
Munich
JFK
Out of Sight (a million times better than the shitty book it's based on)
Solaris

Now I'm tired. What am I missing as far as movies that surpass the books they're based on?

From the Casting Couch

2007-08-06T07:52:00.000-04:00

I'm just doing a short post now to get the topic out on the board. I'll update with my own response later tonight.

I'm fairly certain we all read. A lot. And I'm sure we all have some book we'd love to see turned into a movie. Well here's your chance to cast it. Give us a synopsis, and then tell who you'd cast in what roles. If you have a favorite director, hell, tell us that too.

Or, if there's a movie already made that you would've done casting differently, talk about that.

UPDATE:

Well an author I’ve recently become slightly obsessed with (and I know Jane’s with me on this) is Neil Gaiman, so I’m going to cast the first novel of his I read, American Gods.

The basic synopsis is that a convict, Shadow, is let out of prison a few days earlier than his original release date due to the death of his wife. He heads home, ready for the funeral and to start his new life, when he meets a strange man named Wednesday, who is offering him a job as a bodyguard. He rejects it, but then finds out his new job is gone due to the death of his best friend, who died in the same car accident as his wife. In fact she was was giving him a blowjob in the car. Oh - and she comes back from the dead too. Well it turns out Wednesday, is a god, Odin, and is on a crusade to gather up all the other gods in the country to rebel against the new ones America has created. The old gods were brought over with believers from other countries when they immigrated. However, as time passed, and the generations stopped believing, the old gods were forgotten, and were left to live normal lives. America replaced them with things like the internet, television, and money.

Czernobog - Peter Stormare - Slavic god that makes a bet with Shadow that if he wins a chess game, he gets to smash his head in with a hammer. Unsettling - just like this guy always is to me.

Anansi - Morgan Freeman - Lively, witty god - trickster of African folklore. Actually a bit more prominent in another Gaiman novel - Anansi’s Boys.

Shadow - Gary Dourdan (Yes, that’s the guy from CSI - I think he could totally pull off convict - at least one with depth - I could have easily just said Vin Diesel or The Rock, but that’s a bit of a cop out)

Wednesday - Billy Drago (Ok - this is where I have to admit that I watch Charmed, and he played Barbas, and was super creepy looking - btw Wednesday is not always a trustworthy character)

There are a ton more gods - several of which I might have to cast once I get to a computer with a faster internet connection. You can check out the list on Wikipedia - and feel free to add to this if anyone has read this book. I’ll try to get some links up to these actors’ pages on imdb, but in case I don’t, is it really that hard for you to look for yourself?

dear fake abby

2007-08-02T21:44:00.000-04:00

i know a guy who is really annoying. he constantly criticizes people and complains about whatever we're doing, but then afterwards he says he had fun. i want to stop hanging out with him because i'm tired of all the whining, but all his other friends have already abandoned him and i feel guilty leaving him all alone. i want to be able to tell him that if every single person he spends time with decides not to spend time with him any more, that it might not be every single other person in the world who has the problem, but i don't know how to say it without sounding really mean. please help.
-spineless in denver

Dear Supergroup, (for real this time)

2007-08-02T11:50:00.000-04:00

Hi everyone! This is Jane writing as myself, not as some fictional advice seeker. The thing is, I *do* actually need some advice. I've written all about it over on my blog, so please click here and advise away! Thank you, thank you!

Dear Supergroup

2007-08-02T10:14:00.000-04:00

I am a blond, slim, 5-foot-10 female -- single and in great shape. People tell me I am beautiful. I am also HIV-positive.

I would like to meet someone special and settle down. But as soon as I meet a man I like, I struggle with the question of when to reveal my health situation. I have told them right away and I never hear from them again, which I find very insulting.

Some of my friends tell me I should date a guy for a few months and then say something, but I'd feel betrayed if someone waited that long to tell me.

I don't want to just blurt out the information at a first meeting. I'm very confused. Please help me. -- WANTS TO BE MARRIED, GAINESVILLE, FLA.

*This was shamelessly ripped from Dear Abby. I thought it was interesting that the first one I read was from good ol' G-ville*

Dear Supergroup,

2007-08-01T07:22:00.001-04:00

For years I've been interested in dream analysis. For a long time I have consulted with an expert on this topic... although over the years she and I have become good friends. As such, I am no longer comfortable sharing my most intimate dreams with her. Last night's dream is one such example: I dreamt that I was outside, at my childhood home, next to a chicken coop - except instead of chickens, it was full of old clothes. I had a vibrator, and was masturbating while standing next to the chicken coop. Suddenly, before reaching orgasm, something popped out of my vagina (or as you spell it over here, vagnia). It was a small fleshy ball, covered in blood. I continued to masturbate - but then the battery in the vibrator died AND another fleshy ball popped out of my vagina. I awoke unsatisfied and confused. What can this mean???

~Seeking Analysis in the Dreamworld

Dear Supergroup,

2007-07-30T21:36:00.000-04:00

Sorry guys, I just remembered that it's my turn to pick the topic.
I'd like to try something a little different this week. You know those advice columns in newspapers and magazines that you always just have to read? Don't worry, it's not just you. We all do that.

This week I'd like our bloggers to each write a short advice-seeking letter for a post... and I'd like our commentors to respond to it. You don't have to have ever commented before to play along-- if you have advice to give, let's hear it! My only request is that if it's not a made up problem, bloggers, please at least disguise it enough so we don't know who you're talking about. Below is my letter, and I hope for lots of good advice!

Dear Supergroup,

My roommate, "Emma," and I have shared an apartment for 4 years now. In fact, my parents stopped me from moving in with a guy friend (because of the male-female factor) 4 years ago, so I moved in with Emma. We share everything-- clothes, stories, chores, sometimes even beds. We're super best friends. Lately, though, things have been awkward. A couple weeks ago, we were watching a girlie movie on the couch and I don't know what came over me, but I leaned over and kissed her. She kissed me back, but didn't say anything. Since then, Emma's standing a lot closer when we're cooking together, or coming into my bed most nights, and touching me a lot more often. I know I'm not gay because I was raised in a Christian household, but I really like the attention from her. What does this mean? How should I respond?

--Confused in a 2BR/1BA

First, shadows.

2007-07-30T08:03:00.001-04:00

Hello, all!

I've missed posting for the last couple weeks because I was on vacation in Japan. Quick rehash: I had a great trip in which I got to stay with one of my best friends in Kawagoe (outside of Tokyo), climb Mt. Fuji, visit shrines and temples in Karakura, do karoke in one night Tokyo, let a Japanese family dress me up in a yukata, and even visit co-blogger Martin in Kyoto. There will be pictures and more blogging to follow, but I wanted to comment on the first topic that happened while I was gone, shadows, because I had two pretty great experiences with them while I was in Japan.

In Kyoto, I visited several different shrines and temples, but my favorite was Kyomizu-dera. As I wandered the expansive grounds here and tried to avoid the busloads of tour groups, I happened across a little man holding a grainy picture of a rock next to a flight of steps leading underground. He explained in broken English that I could pay 100 yen to walk through a dark path until I found this rock and, once I did, I could place my hands on it and any wish I made would come true. Well, that's worth 100 yen to me, so I took off my shoes and paid up. 'Keep your left hand on this railing here,' he told me, leading me to the stairs, and I headed down. At first, I was holding a smooth, normal railing and could see well enough from the light coming down from the stairs. But then, after a few twists and turns, the railing turned into circular knobs that made me think of Buddhist prayer beads, and the pathway got completely dark. I mean, my eyes were making up their own images, dark. It reminded me of visiting caves in Georgia as a kid when the tour guide would turn off the lights to show us how dark darkness can really be. My face passed through a curtain that made me gasp quite loudly. I continued walking along and began to feel panicked-- "what the hell was I doing? here I was, in a foreign country, all by myself, and I paid some guy to let me go down into a dark hole? I'm not even wearing shoes! Who knows where I'll end up! I'm just wandering defenseless through some twisting cave? I could fall down a shaft and end up for sale in China! I can't even see where I am!!" But I kept walking, pressing my hand over that railing one bead at a time, stepping slowly in my socks. Eventually, I realized, "you know, I may end up in China. But I'll just have to deal with that when it comes. There's no use panicking about it right now where there's nothing to do. Just keep walking, keep following these beads, and let's just see where you end up." I felt relief, calm spread over me. I took a few deep breaths and another step. Suddenly, to my left, a soft shaft of light appeared, shining directly on the face of a huge granite boulder, grey and unpolished except for a zen circle and some Japanese characters engraved on the top. I followed the beads over and rested my hands on it-- even then I could only see my hands, not even my wrists, in the darkness. I was so moved by this that I actually started to cry a little. After "making my wish," I found the beads again that lead me around one short turn and back suddenly into the light, and the spell was broken.

The other experience I had with shadows deserves a picture. I mentioned that I climbed Mt. Fuji. This involved me joining a Japanese tour group (oops, thought it was English-speaking!) and starting our climb at noon on Monday. We climbed until evening when we stopped at a rest house for some food and a few quick hours of sleep. Then, at 2am, we got up again and climbed the rest of the way up the mountain so we could see the sunrise from the top, above the clouds. There are lots of stories with this but, for the sake of abbreviating this already long post, I'll just mention that after sunrise me and a few other people walked around the volcano's crater to the west side, which is the highest point and actual peak. Here, I was able to see this:

The shadow of Fuji-san on the top of clouds. Incredible.

Ok, I'm already late for work, so more later from me. I know I have a lot of catching up to do!

jane's topic(s)

2007-07-27T02:03:00.000-04:00

haven't read the book - sorry. i'm starting to lean towards brave new world with regard to precognitive whatnot. not that everyone's constantly on drugs or anything, but the feel of it...
traditional "family values" are less important to people now than they used to be (thank goodness) though not quite to the extent that "mother" is a bad word. kids are shipped out sooner though - day care, preschool, all the way through college. i see lots of kids coming through the y who barely know their parents. granted, by putting them in ymca programs, the parents are showing at least a little bit of caring about the kids, but it's not like stay-at-home moms back in the day.
we're not all on soma all the time, but there's much more widespread use of recreational drugs than there used to be - and it's more widely accepted. for example, we just had to update our job applications to make one question ask if "except for cases involving marijuana more than two years ago have you ever been convicted of a crime?"
and the mantra/sex parties? we separate them. we've got yoga, and we've got every crazy sex thing anyone could want (jay & silent bob got to watch a guy do it with a donkey). it used to be shocking to hear about porno and masturbation, but after that one seinfeld episode... well, both topics are open for discussion.
so yeah. it's still a ways in the future, but i see a brave new world on the horizon (and it has been a while since i've read it, so no doubt there are some obvious points that i missed and will feel stupid about later, but all my books are in boxes right now so i can't go look it up).
finally, i just watched idiocracy last weekend (by beavis and butthead creator mike judge), and it kinda made more sense than i wanted it to. reading and writing were "just for fags" (that's a quote from the movie - i don't hate gay people). the most popular tv show was called "ow, my balls" and involved a guy repeatedly injuring his groin (jackass, anyone?), starbucks sold coffee and sex, and the hospital emergency room attendant plugged health complaints into a pictogram screen to diagnose problems. the president was elected because he was wwe champ 3 years in a row.
i don't think we're close to being idiocrats yet, but i could see us potentially getting there if the masses don't stick to education (and i mean more than just what they get fed in high school and through the media).
i can't think of any more scarily predictable books/movies right now, but i'm sure some other super-bloggers will.
have at it!

missed my post

2007-07-27T01:19:00.001-04:00

sorry folks,
i'm moving this week, so i think that's a good enough reason for being late on the shadows topic - which is an easy one for me, although significantly different from all the other posts. here's my shadow:

he's 3 years old and he was rescued off the streets of escondido, ca with his sister when they were about 4 months old. he never quite got used to any humans besides us (there are about four other people who have ever seen him) but to us he is mister demanding. he'll stalk right up to us and demand petting in the squeakiest meow i've ever heard, and he loves people food. he is currently chasing a moth around the apartment. go shadow!

The Political Junkie takes on the YouTube debate

2007-07-25T21:44:00.000-04:00

Ken Ruden, NPR's "Political Junkie" discussed the YouTube debate, among other things yesterday, if you're interested.

No one crushes on Cheney, Part 2

2007-07-25T21:18:00.000-04:00

Since nobody seems too excited by the transparency theme, I thought I'd share what I heard on Wednesday's edition of Talk of the Nation on NPR. They interviewed one of the co-authors of the series about Cheney that Jen linked to a while back, and it was quite fascinating. Give it a listen!

Hoping For a "V"

2007-07-24T18:18:00.001-04:00

Sadly, I have not gotten to read Transparent Society - we don't have it at the library, and currently I am mere pages from finishing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, so I don't think I would've gotten through it in time for this post anyway. I did however go to his site, though I could only get through the first page before trying to decide between taking a cyanide pill now, or letting the government take me out when I try to run.

Though we may live in a society where technology puts some power in the hands of the people, what do we use it for? To post stuff like this. While it's useful for embarrassing celebrities or holding politicians responsible for off-color remarks, what good has it really done? You could argue that blogs are the ultimate weapon of the people - a chance for us to share ideas and rally around them, but I know what crap I write about. And even if we were in such a dystopian society, why would we even still have the internet? A lot of countries right now restrict what their citizens can gain access to - imagine if it were worse.

As far as a 1984 Orwellian government - I'd have to agree that we're closer to something like that happening. Wasn't Winston's job in the book to go back through and rewrite newspaper articles and historical documents to fit it to the present - like the war that keeps changing enemies - sound a little familiar? Now, I'm sure there's not an administration that couldn't be accused of a little spin, but the fact that a war with Afghanistan quickly turned into a war with Iraq, which looked like it would turn into a war with Iran or Syria - it's ridiculous! Wire-tapping, raising themselves above the Constitution - it's scary to think about.

Switching gears (well, sort of), has anyone else seen Minority Report? I actually kinda liked it when it came out, but Tom Cruise is all kinds of scary crazy now, and it angers me a little to watch his movies. Short synopsis for anyone who hasn't seen it - it's the future, and TC works for a section of the government called precrime. There were triplets born who could see the future, so the government captured them and used them to predict future crimes. TC's job was to take the flashes of info and decipher them, hopefully in time to stop the crime from ever happening. (Yeah - how much would that suck? Getting jailed for a crime you didn't even have a chance to commit.) One day, while doing his job, TC gets a flash, and he's in it, so he goes on the run - there's more, but that's the basic scenario. But that is my ultimate horrifying glimpse of the future - that and V for Vendetta - oh and Children of Men. (Hopefully if that is indeed the future, we'll have a V as well)

A Transparent Society?

2007-07-23T09:09:00.000-04:00

I'm currently reading a book written by science fiction author David Brin... but it's non-fiction. It's called The Transparent Society, and it was originally published in 1998. Now, there are quite a few things about this book that are just a little bit freaky... one of which is how it came to be in my possession. A friend of Gwen's gave her this book when she was in college in Alabama. She brought it to Korea and lent it to me. Now that in and of itself is not freaky whatsoever. What is freaky is that inside the front cover is taped a Lake City Community College Library decal! The friend who gave it to Gwen was not from Lake City. Weird huh? Okay, so his grandparents live in Wellborn, so perhaps they stole it from the LCCC library? Anyhoo, now that we've satisfied the LC-centric portion of this blog, let's move on to what's really freaky about this book: the fact that it was published in 1998, meaning that the bulk of it was probably written in 1997.

Now, while I admit that the bulk of 1997-1998 is rather a blur for me.... but one thing that I do clearly recollect is that 1997 was the year when I initially became addicted to the Internet. I don't know how much you remember about late 90s internet, but it was slow ass, lacking in flash, animated clip art and geocities homes sites were the rage, and there was no wikipedia, no YouTube, and the word blog hadn't yet been invented. Then there's this book, The Transparent Society, written way back then.

I'm assuming none of you out there other than Gwen has read this book (although if you have - yay!), so let me do a very brief summary for you. Brin's theory is that technology will influence the evolution of society in one of two ways:

Choice A: Think 1984 - omnipresent government with cameras and computers spying on your every move. Freedom is essentially lost because the government is everywhere, seeing everything you do. Crime diminishes (who wants to go to prison?) although who knows what crimes the government is committing!

Choice B: The citizens take matters - and technology - into their own hands. Everyone owns a digital camera, has an internet connection, and monitors everyone else - and shares what they know. Crime diminishes (who wants their dirty secrets published on the web?) and government becomes incredibly more transparent because the masses are always watching.

This is obviously an incredibly simplistic analysis of The Transparent Society, but there's a lot more on Brin's website if this sort of thing interests you. Just give a thought to recent events that wouldn't have made a splash at all had it not been for some Johnny-on-the-spot with a camera and a YouTube account, such as the Macaca Moment and Bomb Bomb Iran (among many others) and you'll realize that we are well on our way down the path of Choice B.

In line with that theme, later tonight (your time - it'll be sometime tomorrow morning here in Korea) CNN and YouTube will sponsor a Democratic debate unlike any other (and it'll be followed by it's Republican counterpart in September). I'm totally bummed that I won't be able to watch it live - although I rather suspect that I'll be able to download it. For this debate, YouTubers create video questions for the candidates (there are almost 3000 of them, and you can view them here), and CNN will select however many of those questions for use in the debate.

So... things to write about this week (and I'll give you some choices) - What do you think about Brin's theories on transparency and where technology is taking us? Or about YouTube and its impact on politics? The CNN/YouTube debate? (Especially any of you cats who got to watch it!) And, if those topics don't do anything for you, feel free to let me know if you know of any creepy precognitive books/movies. Other than The Transparent Society, the only other thing I can think of is those movies Glenn, Matt and Jordan made in which I was Special Agent Keeler. Who'd'a thunk that would actually happen?

Ploem

2007-07-21T15:56:00.000-04:00

Here's a poem in which I tried to use the theme of shadows. It needs some work.

THE THINGS WE OWN AND THE THINGS WE WISH TO OWN

At the gas station before dawn the moths
are huge. The size of dinner plates. Wings
like a paper doll project. Bright colors. Non-
aerodynamic. Gets your heart racing. In a bad
way. So get back in the car already. I told you
this wasn't the sort of place we should stop.
There is still a hum on the air. Something high
pitched. The shadow of the earth crept up on
us somehow. The radio only plays gospel
stations. And even they're not coming in clear.
The CD player broke miles ago. Not that we
could agree on the albums. Above Atlanta
the hills swallowed the major highways. So
suddenly there were curves and even the small
light the stars gave was gone. A runaway mine
cart. The pedals too far from our feet. And then
the hum. It could be power lines if there were
any power lines. It could be cicadas but the only
living things we've seen are the moths and the gas
station attendant. Sometimes the body is at
home in shade. Other times it's a razored snare.
Reason to feathers. When we see a rest area
we will sleep, O, Charon. O, stream of blood.

King of the Shadows

2007-07-19T21:44:00.000-04:00

“Even shadows die sometime”, Gabe thought, “when the sky is moonless, void of light - they die”. He snuffed out his cigarette and then chided himself for indulging in his apparent desire to be a 16 yr old goth kid. There was a task at hand, and this was no time for philosophizing, - if you could call it that. Or was it? Death had always brought out his inner Socrates, Kant or Nietzsche.

He hefted the gun in his hand, relishing the weight, the power inherent within. How many times had he used this thing? “Maybe we become the shadows when we die.” If that was so, it wasn’t much of a change of existence for the people he had “taken care of”. People living on the edge of true existence - they were there, visible, but were rarely noticed until night came, and were suddenly transformed into instruments of fear, making their true forms known and causing havoc with others. During daytime they retreated to dark crevices, or were largely ignored by the population, used to seeing them day in and day out.

If that were true, what would happen to him when he died? If he became a shadow too, these people, monsters, could torture him for making them that way. Or he could be relegated to king, out of gratitude for liberating them, freeing them from the shackles of a corporeal body. King of the Shadows. He knew about enslavement himself, but that would all change in a matter of moments. Tonight he was freeing himself from his damned life.

Gabe put his gun against the right temple. The sensation took him back to the beginning of this whole - mess. The flood of emotions - the fear, the hatred, the overwhelming melancholy - made his hand shake, and he lowered the gun, afraid if he took a shot now, he’d miss, and damn himself further.

He took a breath, and resumed the gun’s position. He had to take control of his life now, and this was the only way he saw possible.

He closed his eyes, and braced himself as he pulled the trigger.

The light was blinding, but as Gabe wiped the blood from his hands, he felt he was finally free from his life as a hit man, and free from living in the dark, the world of shadows - for now.

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

Ok - sorry if this was a bad and self-indulgent post - it's just the only thing I could think of. I'm not going to be back on a regular schedule until next week, and hopefully then they'll be better. At least I posted on the day I was supposed to this time.

The shadow army, the shadow government

2007-07-18T23:12:00.000-04:00

How much do you know about government contractors? I suspect that it might not be all that much - hell, turns out the US government isn't all too sure how many government contractors there are, what they're doing, or how much they're getting paid. Doesn't sound too great now does it?

Before I cop out and post two links to some VERY informative and interesting podcasts on the topic, here's my two cents: A while back, I wrote about my experiences as a government employee. My job was to conduct background investigations on government employees and contractors in need of security clearance. Many contractors were also hired to conduct background investigations. They were doing the same job I was doing, only they got paid based on how many cases they closed. Do you really think that quantity over quality is a good thing in this scenario? And does it surprise you that this was happening under the Bush administration with all it's tough on terror, strong on security rhetoric? Oh, the hypocrisy.

Anyway, I'm running late this morning, so I shall leave you with two podcasts to which you absolutely must listen:

The Rise of Blackwater USA (the shadow army of the US)

Government Contractors (the shadow government of the US)

Off topic

2007-07-18T13:10:00.001-04:00

Before I swear off blogging, I thought I'd post this for anyone who may still be interested in the outcome of that gay-bashing robot toilet controversy that became a somewhat hot topic here (at least to some), here's a follow-up story that's worth a read:

Link

It was mercifully deleted from the budget; but the article contains some more interesting tidbits about this situation.

America the great and what's lurking in the shadows

2007-07-17T00:19:00.000-04:00

Well howdy doody there cats and kittens, thiseehere blog might be a day late and a dollar short but hopefully its at least enough to get you all through a cup of coffee or whatever it is you drink over there in your own respective areas of the world. I had a lot of trouble getting up the nerve to actually admit all the things I love about America, but here I finally am, perhaps mostly because it is my turn to post the topic for this week as well and I don't want to keep you people waiting too long.

Letssssssseeeeee... America. Yup pretty much I like being in the mountians, in the ocean, or somewhere dodging bullets if I'm back in the states. The last part was a lie. I've never dodged a bullet in my life. By the way, I'm writing this on like 3 hours of sleep and not nearly enough coffee to sustain any kind of logical thought process. But as it were, I do like the fact that Americans generally don't beat around the bush as much as people living in some other countries *ahem* Japan *ahem*. I do miss my friends, family, and the openness of being able to walk up to some random people on the street and strike up a conversation, but the better my Japanese becomes the more opportunities I have to do just that and am able to make more friends here, so even that is perhaps only a matter of being accustomed. But I also miss smalltalk. Like little quips about whateverthehell when you're at work. But that might be something I love about English and not particularly America.

Anyway, thats about all I've got to say about that.

Now for the topic of the week, which can be taken as literally or as figuratively as you want. The topic is shadows. I'm going to post a longer blog about it later this week but I'm interested to see what everyone has to say about shadows, be it their own or the ones cast over them, the shadows of lingering memories, of love, the literal shade of an oak on a scorching summer day. Just write about shadows. And let it roll out of you like the nothing.

Peace.

Ditto

2007-07-15T17:34:00.000-04:00

Yes, I am totally being a bum on this post. One of the great things about America? Our ability to procrastinate and do things half-assed. Some may not see that as an asset, but today, for me, it is.

My lovely cobloggers have already done a great job of describing the very things I value about America. So rather than give you another post that reiterates all of the things I love - the scenery, free speech, etc., let me not bore you with my post and just say "ditto".

Also? On the free speech note - vagnia, vagina, Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, condom, porn, plushies, pony play, fetish. That should get us some more hits.

why america is great...

2007-07-15T15:44:00.000-04:00

anyone seen "thank you for smoking"? the kid in the movie has to write an essay about why america has the greatest government in the world. i don't remember what the essay ended up saying. i just remember the lesson that the dad (aaron eckhart) taught his kid - there is no wrong answer to that question.
i don't think they were talking about the current administration - or any specific administration. they meant the process of government. the united states' constitution provides a means for our government to evolve based on the needs (or voted wants) of the people. i think that's pretty incredible.
i also love america's landscape. can anyone believe that the white stuff cap'n jack wades through in the latest pirates installment is actually in a real place? the salt flats in utah - arguably one of the most incredible sights i have ever seen. right up there with the mountain goats romping over crags/glaciers up in the rockies, deception pass in washington state, the moss-covered hangy trees in south carolina, flowers blooming amidst the sand dunes in death valley, and full autumn colors in the appalachians. all of the above take my breath away. i don't have awesome photos like janes, but i'm glad to claim the locations as 1/300,000,000th mine.
i'm also a big fan of the rights we are guaranteed - freedom of speech, the press, of peaceful assembly, of fair trade and labor, and the right to sue the asses off anyone who violates any of our other rights. not that i've sued anyone, but i love the fact that power in the hands of the people helps keep our government from being totally corrupt. not that there aren't crooked politicians, but they're not even close to as bad as, say, mexico's corrupt system.
i also like the newness of our country. other places i've been have been pretty steeped in tradition, but here we are free to, in essence, shop around for which traditions and customs we'll carry on. that's cool.
i know this is going to sound weird, but i also like that we have all kinds of safety regulations. i like knowing that any food or drug i buy has been prepared in such a manner as to seriously reduce my risk of illness. i like knowing that i'm not going to get dyssentary from my water or anything like that (yes, i know that crazy things still happen sometimes, but the probability is so low here compared to other countries). the regulations make me feel safer.
finally, i love that we are so into humor here. there is so much in america that is, or can be, really funny. we make funny tv shows, movies, music, conversations, slogans on clothes, sayings, shoot, we have jib-jab and strongbad, beavis and butthead, team america, weird al, larry the cable guy, jerry seinfeld, bill cosby, bad cat, laughter is the best medicine (in readers' digest), dr. seuss, and so much more! i've never been to another country whose citizens spent so much time laughing out loud. how awesome is that?!?

This one's worth ten-thousand words!

2007-07-12T00:07:00.000-04:00

Last year, when I was living in Russia, most of my students were adults (as opposed to this year, where all of my students are children). I was frequently asked questions about the US, and in every class, George Bush came up at least once. This is a pretty liberal blog, and you should all realize by now that I too am pretty liberal - I disagree with nearly everything that comes out of the mouth of our current President and I strongly dislike the man. That's not really the point of this post. The point is, when my Russian students would hear my strong, unapologetic expressions of disapproval for the Bush administration, they would grow quiet and exchange furtive glances. Then, inevitably, one would ask me something along the lines of, "Aren't you afraid to say that?" This happened in EVERY adult class that I taught. My students were all concerned that if I voiced my disapproval for Bush - even though I was far from home - something might happen to me. Granted, while some of these adult students were my age, many were far older, and had lived the bulk of their lives under the Soviet regime... but I rather suspect that this built in fear of speaking out against the government has a lot to do with the fact that Putin's popularity remains sky-high. (That and he has a black belt in judo AND looks like Dobby the house elf. Also... damn.) I *love* the fact that I feel perfectly at ease speaking out against the current US administration... and I think that very well may be my favorite thing about the US.

Second favorite? Just take a look at some of the places we own - and these are just from the few I've visited in my short life. It's such a HUGE country... and there's so much more out there for me to photograph - I love it!

Intracoastal Waterway, off the GA coast

Sapelo Island, GA

Satilla River, Ware County, GA

THE Grand Canyon. 'Nuff said.
(Sadly, due to pollution, it's hazy like this most days of the year.)

San Diego, CA

Balboa Park, San Diego, CA

Mt. Rainier, WA

My house!! :-)

Also, we're the land of Jack Daniel's!

Even our scary pollution can sometimes appear picturesque.
Rayonier Paper Mill, Jesup, GA

Misplaced Priorities...

2007-07-11T10:19:00.000-04:00

...or "For The Benefit of the Girl Who Is Still Upset That She Was Conceived in a Public Toilet"

This is very off topic, but relevant, since a troll has unfortnuately followed me over to this blog from my personal blog (sorry, guys) and posted the most disgusting personal attack I think I've ever had leveled at me.

It all started with an article from my local paper, which I posted on my blog and posted literally two sentences about before I posted a whole extremely long post about something else.

Some fun highlights of this story:

Now the mayor has shifted his attention to a robotic toilet, saying the invention could have a special edge over a traditional restroom in preventing the "homosexual activity" that he said plagues other public restrooms.

The robo-john the city might buy for $250,000 or more allows occupants to stay inside for only a short time before the door opens. Probably not enough time for "illegal sex," Naugle figures.

That's calling out ONLY homosexuals for having sex in public restrooms. How about heterosexuals? So that's gaybashing right there. And I, since I live here (and our idiot troll does not) will be paying for that with my tax money. Here's another nice little tidbit:

"We're trying to provide a family environment where people can take their children who need to use the bathroom," he said, "without having to worry about a couple of men in there engaged in a sex act."

Though police say sex in restrooms is no longer a hot crime, the mayor thinks it is. He talked about the illicit sex recently in public meetings, in an interview and in e-mails to residents.

Naugle, not a stranger to public controversy, particularly on the issue of gays, said public restrooms are pickup places for "homosexuals. ... They're engaging in sex, anonymous sex, illegal sex."

Again, the gaybashing. I know for a fact heterosexuals have sex in public restrooms. People in general, when desperate, will have sex anywhere they can (Glenn could tell us a funny story about his old house in Tallahassee). Police say that sex in restrooms is no longer a hot crime. That's a key statement.

Some good information on our wonderful mayor:

When the Christian outreach event Beachfest came to town in 2003, he said anyone who had a problem with the city's official embrace of the religious festival "can move to Iraq."

He angered middle class residents last year when he said housing prices would be affordable if people worked more hours instead of sitting on the couch drinking beer. Earlier this year, he refused to sign a mayor's pact to reduce greenhouse gases. Naugle said global warming is not caused by humans and that the pact contained "hate-America stuff that the environmental wackos want in."

Wonderful man, that is. Proud that my tax monies will go to that.

As one of the more, uh, sane commissioners said:

The beach needs more toilets, he said, and the decision shouldn't be made on whether people will use them for sex. And they still might, he said, even in the short time-frame.

"I'm not an expert on public toilet sex," said Trantalis, "but there are those who would say one minute would be enough. Or 30 seconds."

And lastly, this is just for you dear Linda, who thinks that public restroom sex is such a problem:

Police officials said male sex in restrooms is actually not a problem, anymore.

"There's no evidence, no reports or arrests made for any men having sex in any restrooms," said Sgt. Frank Sousa. NO reports and NO arrests made.

So it's not a problem. Just a problem for you, apparently. Which I'm pretty sure I diagnosed- people who have such insane and intense problems with such asinine things are usually that way because of something in their life- such as the preacher who obsessed about gay sex who we find out has gay sex. I don't even want to know Linda's preoccupation with public restrooms and sex.

And now, let's look at some numbers here-

In Broward County, about 8.7% of families and 11.5% of the population were below the poverty line, including 15.3% of those under age 18 and 10.0% of those age 65 or over. 15.3% of KIDS are impoverished.

Broward County as a 48.7% dropout rate. That means almost 50% of kids drop out of school here.

Broward County recorded 75,314 "index offenses" in 2006- index offenses being Murder, Sexual Offenses, Robbery, Aggravated Assault, Burglary, Larceny, and Motor Vehicle Theft. The violent crime rate was 614, the non-violent 3,612. Broward had 87 murders, 3,685 robberies, 6,152 aggrivated assaults, 13,218 burgularies, 44,240 larceny arrests, 7,092 grand theft auto arrests. We also had 840 forcible sex offense arrests. The ratio is 75,314 crimes committed in a county the population of 1,753,166- or 4,295 crimes per 100,000 residents. Crimes meaning actual crimes- not consentual sex of any kind, whether it is in a restroom, parked car, the bushes, an office, etc. Seventeen of the thirty-one cities within Broward saw crime increase, and homicides have gone up (even though crime for the State of Florida has dropped).

The North Broward Hospital District Health Care for the Homeless program estimates there are 8,000-10,000 homeless people in Broward, much of them children, with veterans, people who fought for this country, being a large chunk of them, if not a majority, and most of the rest of them homeless because of medical bills.

It's estimated that Broward County has 30,000 living without health insurance.

Because I work for a governmental entity within the County, I called BSO to find out if I could get numbers for arrests for public sexual acts. I was told that they could probably squeeze out some numbers, but they are so low they are lumped in with other "lewd and lacivious" acts, like streaking, flashing, etc. And all of those acts together are an extremely small number and in most cases carry little penalty and don't reflect Broward's crime index. Because it's not much of a crime or a problem. There's your fucking numerical analysis.

If you think that tax money should be spent on robotic bathrooms that open the door after one minute (and any man or woman will tell you that legitamate bathroom acts often take more than one fucking minute) while we have other things that are ACTUAL FUCKING CRIMES and we have children living in poverty and we have possibly 10,000 homeless people here. And you worry about sex in public restrooms; something so ridiculous I was almost laughed off the phone.

People who think that idiotic social victimless non-crimes are more important and more deserving of tax dollars than REAL crime (rapes, murders, robberies, assaults, etc.) and poverty and homelessness and health care for children and seniors, are disgusting people who don't deserve to be called American. That lack of perspective and compassion is the most disgusting thing I can imagine, and I can only hope that a sane majority will always keep people like that (read: Linda) in a fringe minority. I might not want to be in the stall next to two people getting it on. But I'd much rather see someone get the health care they need, or see children graduate from high school and not live in poverty, or see police policing actual crimes. Any sane person would.

Reminding us to have hope

2007-07-10T20:34:00.001-04:00

I'm pretty glad this topic made me stop and think about things I love about America. Because, I gotta say, after watching Tony Danza's hosting of this year's Capitol Fourth, I was beginning to question why I still live here. (Sorry, I tried to find a YouTube link for that, but there doesn't seem to be one. Trust me that it was pretty embarrassing for everyone).

I'm kidding, of course, about questioning why I live here. I feel like I have to say that this week because people seem pretty sensitive about such a basic issue. Why do you like the place you live? When I was younger, I used to be a lot more "patriotic" than I am now. As I got older, I got more cynical and focused more on the negative aspects of American culture. But there's really so much good.

For example, an I know this sounds like a strange place to start, but look at the American media. As Laurie mentioned, the right to free speech in America is amazing. When our government lies to the people, the media steps in to make their actions known. In a lot of ways, the media can be more powerful than a dishonest executive and a weak legislative branch, which we've had quite a bit of lately. A few days ago I mentioned the Washington Post articles about Dick Cheney lately, the four part Angler. I thought this was a fascinating look at places few citizens can reach and a great insight into the nuts and bolts of this particular administration. The same, of course, can be said for the Woodward and Bernstein reporting of Watergate, to name a big one.

Obviously, not all media outlets exist to promote truth, fairness, and transparency in government. But that's when we leave it to the American people to make up their own minds. I certainly don't think voters always make the correct choices, or at least they don't tend to vote as a group the same way I vote as an individual. And I don't think recent events support the idea that the voters as a group made the correct decision in 2004. However, this is still a democracy. We won't always a agree on everything, but we have the power to correct it. This awesome power can create a pendulum effect-- one group gets power, another is dissatisfied and works harder to mobilize, the group in power gets lazy and careless and is soon replaced.

So the democracy, the civil rights, and the freedom that citizens have to make their own choices makes America a place of hope. I have the hope, for example, that the current administration and ruling party will be replaced with another that will take the country's interests above those of corporations and individual interest groups. Not every mistake in the past can be fixed, but if we all participate in the electoral process--learn about the issues, form our own opinions, vote, and pay attention to the outcomes--then we can at least positively influence the future.

Freedom and the Best American Movie EVER

2007-07-10T15:20:00.000-04:00

In the words of Bart Simpson, "Hey, America, you're so fine, you're so fine you blow my mind, America." Now as most of you may or may not know I'm usually ~~an extremely~~ a pretty contentious person. I spend a lot more time complaining about the ole U.S. of A. than I do singing her praises so I've decided to throw my hat into this week's discussion and take up the challenge of naming a few things I love about my country (patriotic music swells up here).

First and foremost (and I'm amazed Glenn didn't talk about this), I'd like to give a shout out to the Bill of Rights. That whole free speech thing--fucking brilliant. Considering how frequently it's attacked these days, particularly by morons who mysteriously think the ACLU is bad, I sometimes forget that we came up the whole idea of guaranteeing by law that people be allowed to voice their opinions, no matter how unpopular.

For example, when I googled "why America is great," I turned up this website. I disagree with at least half the items this schmoe's list (Wal-Mart? college football? Monopoly? I think not.), but I'm still all for his right to appreciate things that suck. And THAT's what's really great.

Changing direction a bit, let's acknowledge that it was Americans who invented the internets, allowing us to all be here today having this virtual discussion about why we're so damn great. I know that for many of us it's an addiction, but still, hats off to the internet.

Now, I don't want to name too many things here since there are a hell of a lot of people who will be posting after me, but I'd like to quickly celebrate one last thing, a person actually, or rather persons. That's right, I'm talking about the Coen Brothers. Honestly, I don't think I could survive without a minimum bi-monthly viewing of The Big Lebowski, and I think it's fair to say The Big L is a celebration of America in its own hilarious way. And because it makes me smile, I'll leave you with a clip from the movie. I chose this one because I saw John Tuturro in Union Square last week and that was awesome. He's MUCH taller than he looks in the movies.

PS - Sorry for going totally link crazy. I have way too much time on my hands.

Looks like I fell off the perverbial boat (parenthesis)

2007-07-10T01:45:00.000-04:00

Hey there lads and lasses, guys and dolls, dodecahedrons and polychronopoli,

Just thought I'd take a moment (late is better than never, right?) To write something up on last weeks topic, which for some reason I had been convinced I was supposed to write every week on Sunday rather than simply after Jen, who writes before I do (should I always wait till she has finished? (don't worry Jen, not blaming this on you... just had a helluva crazy weekend (now I just wonder how many parenthesis it's gonna take to give enough excuses that everyone would actually forgive me (its like one of those Russian dolls now (guess whats in the middle (can hardly wait can ya? (po(;p)op))))))). I'm pretty sure I've gotten the hang of it now though. Anyway, as far as this whole job thing, Jane certainly left a difficult post to follow (as did everyone(but hers is about teaching english in a foerign country)), but I'll go ahead and give my best effort at a somewhat logical continuum of uninterrupted thought.

As far as I'm concerned, its not entirely about what you DO when discussing the world of work, and although "how much?" is not irrelevant, it ranks just above the question "how often?" and right below the question "how satisfying?" in my book of employment makers and breakers. For example, I'd be perfectly happy to be payed in three healthy (but not square... hep maybe) meals a day and an occasional bath if the work was snowboarding all day every day or holding down the beach with a library of good books at my fingertips. But then again, another key obstacle on the way of finding peace with one's "career" is the element of repetition. I mean, I don't care how much cash I'd get to work at a toll booth (A LOT) or to mindlessly put labels on bananas, or stamp stuff on things all day, I don't want it. Unless I'm stamping my seal of approval on beautiful Swedish girl's asses (I can't believe I gave up that high paying dream job to work at the GAP! Stupid stupid stupid!)

But thats about enough of the hypothetical "which work works for my great work on reworked workmanship" work. Its high time to lay down a bit of what I know, rather than what knows me (not to mention what I know now verses the knots I knew not in the then now of not knowing... then).

Yeah. I said I'd TRY to be logical.

So after having worked a number of interesting gigs through my formative highschool and college years, which ranged from GAP soldier (yes, that part was true... fortunately I got out before they made all their employees wear sniper walky-talkies and have buttsex) to server at a plethora of restaurants from the most simply minded family restaurant to a real classy joint where people danced Salsa till 3 in the morning and the champagne flowed like really really thin funnelcake batter that was carbonated and golden in color and not in the least bit opaque; cake batter in fact, exactly like champagne.

Then of course, was the summer of a thousand jobs, most of which I got somehow or other due to my wonderful friendship with Seargent Arch, the peace loving but willing to bust some skulls Semper Fi painter poet who can do just about anything if you've got a wrench, a cigarette, and a beer. Yeah, that was the summer of catering gigs, building ramps for handicapped access, and installing and fixing home elevators all across the coast of Florida, pretty much most of the time with a beer in one hand, and a smoke in the other (none of which I was actually qualified for... except maybe the catering and the drinking).

After that there was a brief stint at a hippy restaurant where I could pretty much drag my ass out of bed at noon, pick the lice outta my beard (I didn't really have lice), roll into my bandana and birks and be at the restaurant serving up a delicious mix of whateverthehell stuffed with stuff, while clouds of sweet smelling smoke (it ain't cilantro) wafted into the dining room from the meat locker... and everyone wondered why the bread pudding was so damn good. And then, somehow, after this akward medley of hodgepodge jobs, I ended up in Japan, as a (somewhat) respectable teacher. And I LOVE it!

Which brings me to the real meat of the topic (although this is getting a little bit ahead of myself, I'd like to mention that I am writing this while I am sitting at the school computer at work. So basically I'm like, making more cash than a large number of writers and still getting payed to write. Sure the lack of recognition hurts from time to time, but bottom line is that I'm making decent money to do what I love. More on this later.) which is (the real meat of the topic) my first job in Japan working at the shittiest language school company in the entire universe (maybe this is actually the appetizer of the topic, the mere toss salad of the topic, as my current job is intended to be the MEAT of the topic.) I'm not making sense again aren't I? Or am I... The eye: the beholder:: the candle: the stick. Sorry, I've been studying for the GRE.

But seriously, this first English teaching job was shit. If you want an idea of what my mindframe was like druing this time, just check out my other blog "skyhookery," where I'll post one of the stories I began while I was a NOVAtron. If I had to choose between the two least savory things in Japan, which are Natto, a kind of fermented bean paste that is made by burying soybeans for a number of months and then digging it up, a concoction that smells like unwashed bumfeet, has the consitency of really runny but kind of sticky snot (whale sperm), and tastes like regurgitated (from the mouth of a crack addict) babyfood, and working at this company where you are encouraged to rat on your friends, where you have to pay more to live in their shitty apartments than you would pay to live in the Ritz, and end up in a room with twenty Brazilian stowaways (nothing against Brazilians), and where you have to sit in a room and entertain four old salarymen who have either been eating natto or chewing on each other's socks all morning, I'd take the Natto experience any day over the thinly veiled bag of ass known as NOVA.

And now, the main course, the vit a la vit (I'm pretty sure I just made that up, but it sounded kind of Fratin (Fratin is used in the book "The Power of Babel" to label a kind of hybrid language which is the preverbial missing link between French and Latin, somewhat comprable to Old English (but even older), which was the language spoken while French was still crawling out of the preverbial swamp that was Latin)) the bee's knees (didn't make that one up, but its still pretty lame. I mean for an expression. Pretty lame for an expression.)

Okay, enough of this Psycho babel, its time now to talk about why I love my job. For me, its not as much even what I do as where I live that I love so much. The job in itself is wonderful, working everyday at Elementary School and Junior High School, essentially being payed to come up with and emcee English games day in and day out, then to go out on the playground and relive my childhood (while learning Japanese language and culture). Not to mention that I spend pretty much all day every day with a huge smile, just from the things these kids say, the honesty, the blatant open truths which are often the opposite of adult Japanese culture.

But I live in Kyoto, which probably ranks up there in the worlds top 5 coolest cities. Imagine Portland with 5000 years plus of history behind every shrub, with the spirits of ancient soldiers and poets lurking in every shadow, with surrounding mountains that home to Japanese Mountain spirits. Imagine a place where you can walk ten minutes in any direction and stumble upon a shrine or temple that has been there for a thousand years, a place where they literally still light the mountains on fire once a year to everyone can imagine the times when warring monk soldiers would attack each other in the dead of night, leaving streaks of burning forest for the villagers like the hotwinded breath of dragons. A place where, walking up the mountain from a particular temple, one comes across a waterfall still used to perform purification rites, where one can walk a bit further up and discover a cave filled with buddhist sculptures carved into the rock, a place where if one kneels down and quiets the mind, one is almost capable of communicating with the long passed monks who have been meditating in that very space for thousands of years, capable of drinking in through the skin the vibrations of a thousand and one (representing the eternal and the finite) sutras spoken throughout the ages. And then there are the boddhisatvas carved into the sides of buildings, the great Buddha of Nara, the Kites that swoop down and steal sandwiches of unsuspecting bbqers. There is the river, where on summer days children play and families BBQ, where couples walk at night and watch the reflection of stars try to push their way up from under the water and back into the night sky. There is the "floating world" of geisha and teahouses, the foreign bars, the izakayas. There is the night. God is there the night and the mornings that follow! The coolest bar in Kyoto, which in order to get there you have to already know where it is, the monkey park and the trains to know where.

So this is all part of the job for me, inseperable as conjoint fetus twins... the place and the thing that allows me to live here, the work to live and not the other way around. Perhaps I'll write more sometime about the details of my actual job, but for now I am so in love with this city that I have trouable seperating the menial tasks of living with the ancient and initial split of the mind and the earth (perhaps the very sound of the first heartbeat, the skies ripping). And so on that note I bid you all adieu. Much love, and sorry again it took so long to get this out. I'll try to be more punctual next time.

America, Fuck Yeah!

2007-07-09T18:36:00.000-04:00

By request, this week's theme is "America: Why We Think It's So Great." Maybe it should have been last week's theme, and this week we could've talked about France or something, since Bastille Day is Saturday. But you know. Hindsight. And who better to ring in the week of posting about America's greatness than the only non-American on BSG?

As many of you know, I moved to Florida from Nova Scotia when I was 13. It was a big change in a lot of ways. First, the town I lived in in Canada, Berwick, was puny. It had a population about 2000 people. There was no fast food restaurant (though I guess now they have a Tim Horton's), no movie theater (the nearest was 30 miles away. Or maybe it was 30 km away. I don't really remember the metric system), and no high school.

So when I moved to Lake City, Florida, it was a pretty big difference, because they had every fast food restaurant, a big fucking Wal-Mart, and a movie theater right there in town that had SEVEN WHOLE SCREENS! Can you imagine? They could show SEVEN movies at once! Though when I got there in 1993 I think six of them were still showing Jurassic Park. But this was still exciting to me. As a kid in Berwick I had to drive 30 minutes to get to a two screen movie theater in Kentville, a huge town that had like 5000 people. Although in my small Canadian town we could go to the drug store and buy comics, which you couldn't do in Lake City. So I had to stop collecting Darkhawk.

But those are all issues that I would have encountered had I moved to a larger Canadian town. The fact of the matter is (and I'm sure every Canadian will disagree with me), Canada and America are pretty much identical in every way, except politically Canada is like if the American Green Party won every election here for the past 30 years. And there's a woman on the money. And I'm not talking about the lame-o dollar coins you never see that Sacajawea and Susan B. Anthony tag team on. Also people like Hockey and delude themselves into thinking Canada is racism-free and has never had slavery.

I guess what I'm trying to say by drawing similarities between Canada and America is that I have a right to talk about America and what's good about it, even if some people might say "Ha ha, but you're from Canada, isn't that aboot right, eh? Ha ha." Yeah, that's been real fucking funny every time I've heard it for the past 14 years.

Now I'm really off topic. This is why it's not a good idea to ever let me introduce something. One thing I really love about America, and especially the American south (where I've lived for 14 years) is that a lot of different cultures come together. Sometimes it's a big train wreck of multiculturalism, and people start saying things like "Deport all illegal immigrants right NOW for GOD'S AMERICA" or something, but usually it's pretty beautiful. The university I teach at (I don't teach grammar) has the most diverse undergraduate body in America. And while most of them still believe everything the president says, it's still nice to have an ethnically diverse background in my classes. It makes me feel comfortable for some reason. It's always a little weird when I go up north (well, southern Illinois, not really north) to visit my parents and it's mainly just white people, with a small black population segregated to one part of town. Those kinds of places make me feel uncomfortable. But the south is this great hodgepodge of white culture, black culture, and Hispanic culture, (mostly, but in Houston there are huge Vietnamese, middle eastern, and south Asian populations, too). It really feels like a part of planet earth when it's not just a bunch of white people everywhere.

Also, American movies are the best. American television is the best. American music is the best. There are obviously some directors or musicians here and there from other countries that are great, but the vast majority of great films, shows, and music come from America. So America wins for pop culture, too.

As well as literature. American poetry is the best poetry there is right now, also. It's especially the best english language poetry. British poetry has been completely awful since Auden, and even he moved to America and never looked back. So sorry, England. Also, most Canadian poetry (I don't want to link any since I'll be applying to at least one Canadian creative writing PhD program [oh, that's "programme"]) is pretty terrible too. (I should note that my poetry is not good in any way, and gets consistently rejected by Canadian journals. So I don't have room to talk I guess. But this is America! Land of bitter complaints and sour grapes! I'll do what I want!) And if you want to get technical, most American poetry is really bad. That means I can't fault England and Canada too much. I just haven't seen too much great stuff from them. And who am I kidding by thinking you guys didn't just skip this paragraph as soon as you saw the word "poetry," anyway?

There's a lot of other great stuff about America, but this post is already kind of long, and I don't want to take away things from other people. So I'll save my other stuff for the comments field. And while I did recently claim to want to move back to Canada in my myspace blog, it is basically the same thing as the USA except colder, so it could just be my frustration with certain elements of America that led me to say that.

PS - Also, I don't want to hear from anybody about how the country I'm talking about is not called "America," but is really called "The United States Of America." Yeah, I know America is the continent. What am I, 15? Nobody is going to read this post and think I'm talking about the entire new world as one entity.